Vince Lombardi: A book, a documentary, a play, and more

This is the holiday week, so as schools wind down for their break and football gets into a higher gear, I though that I'd make my last post for 2010 a football story instead of a school story. This month HBO released an excellent documentary about coaching legend Vince Lombardi. At the same time, a play based on Lombardi's life is continuing a very successful run on Broadway. I had a chance to see both last week.

I was born a little too late to see Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers run roughshod over the NFL during the Sixties. I was only seven years old when his team won the second-ever, but first so-named, Super Bowl beating the Oakland Raiders 33-14.

I started paying attention to pro football the following season when Joe Namath led the "home town" New York Jets to a 16-7 upset over the Baltimore Colts. This is the more significant game in pro football history. Not only did a team from an "upstart" league beat an "establishment" team, it won under the leadership of one of the game's first true "big money" players.

Lombardi, the Broadway play is based on David Maraniss' book, When Pride Still Mattered, an exceptionally detailed biography of the legendary coach. The play is based on a single chapter of the book where a writer spends a week with the coach. The story is organized to tell you about Lombardi's complex relationships with his family, his players, and the media as well as his faith. The play also shows that the success of the Packers will be based very much upon the attitudes and efforts of his running backs: Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor, who were also his team's big money players.

Dan Lauria, who is probably best known as Jack Arnold, the father on The Wonder Years, is the spitting image of the legendary coach; the only difference is the gap between Lombardi's teeth. I've seen the latest HBO documentary on Lombardi, as well as documentary footage. I'd swear to anyone that Lauria plays him to perfection. Judith Light also turns in a spectacular performance as Vince's wife, Marie. If you have seen the documentary, try to see the play. You will appreciate their performances even more. This is an excellent show.

The play is set in 1965, which also happened to be Joe Namath's rookie year with the Jets. Lombardi is in the middle of his seventh season as the Packers head coach and general manager. While he has won two NFL titles, in 1961 and 1962, the Packers have become an aging second-place team.

Lombardi, his coaching peers and NFL general managers consider the NFL's brand of football to be superior to the wide-open game of the five-year-old American Football League (AFL). The AFL has not only survived; it has managed to compete successfully with the NFL for the top college talent. There has been no discussion of a merger, nor a championship game, between the two leagues. That will not happen for several months.

The Jets have signed Namath to a record $427,000 over three years, while Lombardi has failed to sign either one of his first-round picks. One, Donnie Anderson, returns to school while the other, Lawrence Elkins, signs with AFL Houston Oilers. This is the first season Lombardi has lost a top pick to the AFL. Worse for the coach, Jim Taylor, the Packers best running back, sees the bog money awarded to the college stars over the past two seasons, and tells the press that he plans to leave Green Bay once his contract expires.

During the Sixties, money issues probably affected Lombardi more than most other NFL coaches because he had the duel roles of head coach and general manager. He had held both jobs since 1959, his first season in Green Bay. The Packers community ownership entrusted these responsibilities to a man who had not been a head coach above the high school level. Imagine the modern NFL doing that today?

I looked up the statistics for the 1965 season and had to wonder: of all the Lombardi championship teams, was this one the best coached?

The 1965 Packers were not a great offensive team. Quarterback Bart Starr ranked 10th in the NFL in passing while Taylor and Paul Hornung rushed for less than 1,100 yards between them. The leading receiver, Boyd Dowler, ranked 16th in catches. However, on defense they allowed fewer points than any NFL team and they had the best take-away/give-away differential in the league. Lombardi was better known as an offensive coach, however his heart and (loud) voice led the team.

The Packers tied with the Baltimore Colts for the best record in their division and they had to win a play-off game to determine who would play the Cleveland Browns, the 1964 champions, for the championship. The Colts were down to their third quarterback, Tom Matte, normally a running back and the Packers lost Bart Starr on the first play from scrimmage. This was probably the first pro game where the quarterback, in this case Matte, wore the plays on his wrist. That's commonplace in the modern game. The Packers won 13-10 in overtime.

The Packers went on to beat the Browns in the last NFL Championship Game of the pre-Super Bowl era with Taylor and Hornung rushing for approximately 200 years. Then the Packers won the first two Super Bowls by twenty five and nineteen points respectively, to defend the honor of the older league.

However, it can be argued that 1965 was the beginning of the end for the Lombardi dynasty. The following season, Taylor and Hornung became less significant players. Badly injured during the 1966 season, Hornung did not play in the first Super Bowl. Taylor declared his intentions to become a free agent after the season was over, though he scored a touchdown in that game. The following season, Taylor started for the New Orleans Saints; it would be his worst, and last, season in pro football. Lombardi left Hornung unprotected in an expansion draft to stock the Saints roster. A back injury forced Hornung to retire instead.

This year marked the 40th anniversary of Lombardi's death; he succumbed to colon cancer when he was 57. The very next Super Bowl trophy, and the others that have followed, was named after him. The NFL has invested in Lombardi, the Broadway play, and it will be going on tour through major markets after the season is over.

While the NFL has had many great coaches over the past 40 years, no coach has ever won five titles, conference championships as well as Super Bowls, in as few as nine seasons, as Lombardi did, nor turned around two losers in a single season, as Lombardi did with the Packers in 1959 and the Redskins ten years later. Vince Lombardi is still the symbol, as well as the standard, for excellence.

Sarah Palin's Alaska strives to be family show

Sixteen months ago I wrote a post about how Sarah Palin could be "remade" in the minds of cynics as well as supporters. One of the comments that I made was that she should "host a sport fishing show on ESPN and share the beauty of her state with the nation."

Sure enough, she hosts such a show on The Learning Channel (TLC): Sarah Palin's Alaska. I missed the controversial episode where she skins a caribou, but I have had the chance to see three other episodes through on-demand TV.

The TLC program is not so much a sports/recreation show as it is a family show. While Sarah Palin has garnered the fame through politics there is much unique about raising a family of seven in the Alaskan wilderness. Sarah Palin does all of the warrior-gatherer tasks as well as the traditional motherly roles in this program; it treats Todd, her husband, as more of a "handyman in chief."

Of the episodes I watched, the scenes I like best are those I could relate in some way. I am an incompetent fisherman, for instance, but I can see what it takes to be a good one through this show, and I can buy the right equipment and practice. I live in a state populated by black bears, so I enjoy the "scare the bear" scenes as well. I also saw the Heaths, Palin's parents, as very likable people.

The absolute worst scenes I've seen were those on the camping trip with Kate Gosselin and her children. We were treated to Kate Gosselin standing bundled up under a rain-splattered canopy moping while her children and Palin's were playing and cooking together with Sarah as lead camp counselor. Gosselin's whining ruined the show and made it boring to watch.

I heard the quip about Michelle Obama on one of the episodes. All I'll say is that it was inappropriate for the show; this is meant to be an educational program for families, not a springboard for political views. I cannot imagine, for example, TLC attempting to replay this show for school groups unless the politics were edited out.

Palin can say whatever she wants, it is her show, but the program would be more effective if it stayed away from politics and focused on the natural assets of Alaska.

Would college-age drivers go crazy for Chevy Cruze? Not!

During the 1950's, Bunkie Knudsen, a GM executive who was general manager of Pontiac, justified the restyling of his cars by saying: "You can sell a young man's car to an old man, but you cannot sell an old man's car to a young man."

More than half-a-century later, with Pontiac consigned to history, you have to wonder if GM has forgotten that lesson with the introduction of the compact Chevrolet Cruze. The Cruze, built in Flint, Michigan, is a very important new car for the General; it is intended to be their proof that Americans can build a durable and reliable small car that its owner will want to keep for years.

Only problem: small cars should be targeted to younger buyers as a first new car, with the hope of developing brand loyalty. Unless the young worker or recent college grad wants a Camaro or a pick-up truck, I would say that GM has blown their chance with the Cruze.

Here's some reasons why:

Advertising. Television commercials say that the Cruze is "a Corolla with all that you want." Very bad analogy. Not only have Corollas been cheapened with Toyota's latest model, they have also been recalled. The latest issue of Car and Driver, which features a test of the Cruze, mentions three Corolla recalls that happened in the past year, for the engine control module (2005-2008 cars), accelerator pedal (2009-2010 cars) and floor mats (2009-2010 cars). The Camry, the next step up the Toyota line, fares no better.

Toyota is countering by offering a care package. I'd guess the Corolla vs. Cruze comparison is the care package versus the complementary year of On-Star.

Pricing. Given student loans and salaries, assuming a recent college grad has a full-time job, the new car should not cost more than $20,000. That will put you into a nearly loaded Honda Fit or a decently equipped Civic. You start above that for a decently-equipped Cruze. The Car and Driver test car, fully loaded, was over $25,000. You can still find a nice Honda Accord or Hyundai Sonata in that price range.

Choices. Cruze is one-style-fits-all, a four-door sedan. My hunch is that they were looking beyond the Civic buyer to the Accord buyer who might want a luxurious small car as opposed to a less-equipped mid-size. Hence the pricing, mentioned above, and the styling. Honda sells far more Accord sedans than coupes or cross-overs.

But when placed against the Ford Fiesta or Focus, which are more competitively priced, the Cruze is outnumbered. You can get a three-door, four-door, or five-door Fiesta and the Focus will have the same options, plus a wagon. There may also be a turbocharged Focus sports coupe or sedan.

Younger buyers want a sporty option as well as a utility option. Kia probably offers the most choices. You can get a well-equipped Forte coupe or sedan for less than the Cruze, and you can also get a Soul cross-over, a very solidly built car.

I don't understand why GM made the business decisions that they made with the Cruze. It has the most boring styling for a younger buyer and offers less power than comparable models from more youth-oriented brands such as Honda and Kia. Customization potential for this car is not as great. It's going to take more work for GM to get these buyers once they're older and finished with the loan on a competing VW Jetta or a Japanese or Korean brand.

Charter school trustees need appropriate training

This morning on NJSpotlight.com, I found a story by John Mooney, who some consider to be the dean of education reporters in the Garden State. Mooney writes about one of the pitfalls of charter school boards, at least in New Jersey. However, I have no reason to believe that other states face the same problem.

Mooney writes that last month the state's School Ethics Commission made fifteen findings against charter school trustees, who are expected to receive training for their duties for each of the first three years that their schools are in operation. Charter school board members are required to receive the same training as school board members on topics of governance, finance, school law and state monitoring. The training is delivered by the non-partisan and non-profit New Jersey School Boards Association.

Some of the concerns Mooney discusses, such as mis-communications and the content of the training, can be resolved with no government intervention. While charter school board members need to know all that a school board member must know, since they are public schools, they must also know how to work in concert with the academic and non-academic directors of their charter school on matters such as government relations and fund raising, among other subjects.

I realize this post started off a little dry, but Mooney raises an important point: board members of charter schools need to know the same topics as board members of private and parochial schools as well as persons who serve on appointed or elected school boards. They cannot do business above state education laws, even though administrators and teachers are given more autonomy than traditional schools.

The commission took this seriously enough to recommend that four charter school trustees be removed from their duties if they are not completing their training in a timely manner.

There is also a second point: it is a privilege to be approved as a charter school. No matter if the state or a state-designated organization--Governor Christie has proposed a unit based at Rutgers--the approval process must be rigorous. Charter schools are not like construction projects where favors can be more easily doled out. The students who attend these schools still need to take state-mandated tests and learn, at the very least, what the state requires them to know.

A trustee who is not well-trained puts the school at risk of losing the privilege of being in business. The efforts of administrators and teachers to practice a professional philosophy, and succeed, go for naught.

My hunch is that the state department of education and education schools, along with the leaders of the more successful charter schools can develop a relevant training program for trustees.

If they do not press for better training immediately, students are placed at risk, not for their academics, but for administrative malfeasance. There needs to be a stamp of compliance, otherwise a school becomes suspect, or worse, a joke. This also means that the state should not rush too quickly to charters as a solution to failing schools. It will take time to train less experienced trustees properly.

Which takes me to the last point: if you are a parent who is considering a charter school, look at the qualifications of the trustees as well as the full-time staff. Expertise in education, finance, fund raising and non-profit management should be represented on the board. You want to see that there is a commitment to excellence as well as sustenance.

Virginia Tech students should not suffer more from '07 campus shooting

Last week and today I have been reading stories that Virginia Tech faces federal fines for failure to act in a "timely manner" to prevent the mass-murder shooting that happened on campus in April of 2007.

Incidents such as this fall under the federal Clery Act, which requires that students and employees be notified as soon as possible in the event on on-campus threats. In this case, Virginia Tech police made contact by e-mail slightly more than two hours after two students had been found shot in a campus dormitory. Four minutes after the e-mail was sent, the gunman, a senior student, murdered thirty more people in a classroom building.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has already compensated $11 million to victim's families, though two families have filed suit, charging the university with an additional $10 million in damages. Those suits will be tried. Virginia Tech faces fines of $55,000, but there is a greater concern: the university could lose some or all of its federal student financial aid, a total of $98 million.

Supposedly the loss of financial aid is unlikely. The largest fine that has been levied against a university over the same issue, timely warning, is $350,000. That fine was assessed on Eastern Michigan University over the failure to report a murder in a campus dorm. That incident, among others, cost the university president his job.

However, the extent of the shooting at Virginia Tech was far greater, since thirty three people were killed--and the murderer had disclosed his intentions. I can understand why more money is involved as well as sanctions.

Given the extent of the event, and the ways in which the university community came together after the shooting, Virginia Tech students, whether they were or were not on campus on that day in 2007, should not be asked to suffer.

On April 27 of this year, almost exactly three years to the day of the shooting, the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors announced a ten percent tuition increase for the 2010-2011 school year. Tuition and fees rose to approximately $9,800 for in-state students and to more than $23,000 for out-of-state students. Virginia Tech is more welcoming to out-of-state students than most major public research universities.

According to the 2011 U.S. News College Guide, twenty-four percent of Tech's students come from out-of-state. The university also houses thirty-seven percent of its students on-campus, an important asset since Blacksburg, the home of the school, has less than 42,000 residents, including the students. Stay with me for a few seconds; you'll see why this is important.

The town annexed the university campus in 1973, causing the population of the town to more than double. In 1973, Virginia Tech had 6,900 students. Today the school has more than 30,000 enrolled full-time. At the same time, the population of the town has nearly doubled again.

So, given the university's history and town-gown relations, is the university the only party at fault for the local response? Does local government share some blame as well?

According to a Washington Post story on that day, the increase was partially offset by a $130 "mitigation grant" from federal stimulus funds. It is probably safe to say that the tuition and fees would have been higher without the stimulus money, and that another increase of perhaps equal size or higher could be expected for 2011-2012, since the stimulus was a one-time deal. At this time, approximately forty percent of the undergraduate student body receives financial aid. It is also safe to say that more students will need aid if tuition increases rise well ahead of inflation for a second time in two years.

Back in 1986 when the Clery Act was passed in Congress and signed by President Reagan, no lawmaker could have envisioned that a year at a state-supported university would cost as much as $30,000. It would have been impossible for anyone in Virginia politics to predict the state's economic future or the consistency of public support to their state university system.

I would not argue over paying the $55,000 fine. It amounts to less than two dollars per student. It might even be covered through a litigation insurance policy purchased by the university. I would even agree that students, local government and university employees should share in the cost of security improvements to be made on campus since these improvements would make the community safer.

But Virginia Tech, as well as other schools, should not lose one penny of student financial aid due strictly to the Clery Act. Student and family anxieties have heightened enough in Blacksburg. Fines and a safe campus are in order. More financial anxieties are not.

Philadelphia does not deserve to lose America's Game

This weekend, with Rutgers out of the bowl picture for the season, I decided to take the money that I would have spent to see the Scarlet Knights go bowling and attend the Army-Navy Game at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field. The game has always been on my sports "bucket list," and this was an ideal time to go. Army and Navy are both going bowling, and the game will not be as close to home next season.

I had never been to "the Linc" before, so this was also an opportunity to compare the Giants/Jets stadium to the Eagle's nest. I saw the Rutgers-Army game at the New Meadowlands earlier this season. I hate to admit: the Eagles play in a more fan-friendly place.

Parking is easier: if you came for the service academy march-ons, you could get a spot where you can be first-in for tailgate and first-out after the game for less than you pay in North Jersey.

Seating, appropriately for America's Game, was more "democratic." All I had to do to buy a club seat, where you had access to indoor bars and food stands--including Chickie and Pete's famous crab fries--was buy it online. Many Army and Navy alumni and families did the same; there are approximately 11,000 club seats at the Linc, and they all appeared to be sold. You can't get the same experience at the New Meadowlands. America's Game was nearly sold out, so all food concessions were open as were vendors hawking Army and Navy apparel.

When I attended the Army-Rutgers game, half the concessions were closed and no apparel items for either team were sold. Although banners of Rutgers greats were hung around the stadium, once inside I felt constantly reminded: this is not your home field. This might have been due to the attendance; there were slightly more than 41,000 at this game, while Navy-Notre Dame sold out the following week, but still, a stadium operator should have tried harder to make fans feel more welcome at a brand new stadium.

Sight lines at the Linc are also better; at least I felt they were. The bowl shape of the New Meadowlands appears to be flatter than not only the Linc, but also the old Meadowlands or the current Rutgers Stadium. In our new house you feel further away from the field. This was probably done to allow the sidelines luxury seating to be sold by the Giants and Jets.

After my day I had to wonder: why is the game leaving Philly for at least a year?

According to the game program, a very thick glossy book, Army and Navy have played 111 times in eleven cities, with eighty two of the games played in Philadelphia. For the first four seasons. from 1890 through 1893, the game was a home-away affair between the two service academies. The first and third games were played at West Point, the second and fourth at Annapolis. The game returned to Annapolis in 1942 and to West Point in 1943 to conserve on transportation costs.

In 1944 and 1945, the game was as close to a national championship game as possible and it returned to larger cities. In 1944, unbeaten Army was national champion, while 6-3 Navy ranked fourth. In 1945, Army was number one, while Navy was second.

In addition to being hosted on the academy campuses and in Philadelphia, America's Game has been played in Princeton (once in 1906), New York City (11 times, most recently in 1931), Giants Stadium (four times, most recently in 2002), Pasadena (once in 1983), Chicago (once in 1926) and Baltimore (four times, most recently in 2007). Next season the game will be played at Fed-Ex Field, the Washington Redskin's home stadium.

I can understand one reason for the move: Fed Ex Field has more than 81,000 seats while the Linc has nearly 68,000. But when the game moves towards a Washington D.C. suburb, it becomes a Navy home game. The same would be true for Army if the game were played in the 82,000 seat New Meadowlands. Philly is a more neutral site for both schools; it is practically equidistant to either academy. Neutrality is more fitting for a game between the schools that represent the largest branches of our armed forces.

Aside for the issues of home-field advantage and travel, Philadelphia is where the country got started. The first Continental Congress met there. The Declaration of Independence was signed there, and so was the first Constitution.

America's Game could just as easily be called the Liberty Bowl, but an ambitious Villanova athletic director grabbed that name for another bowl featuring different teams in 1959. Philadelphia hosted the Liberty Bowl, now played in Memphis, from 1959 through 1963.

Oddly enough, Navy was invited to play Penn State in the 1959 game, but turned the invitation down. Alabama and Bear Bryant came instead, and lost 7-0. Penn State won the bowl game again in 1960, beating Oregon 41-12, but the game drew less than 12,000 people, with only 200 tickets sold at the gate. In 1961, the game featured featured Heisman winner Ernie Davis in a 15-14 Syracuse victory over Miami. That game drew only 15,000. The year, the game brought another Heisman winner, Oregon State's Terry Baker, who scored the game's only touchdown in a win over Villanova in front of slightly more than 17,000 people. The 1963 game featuring Mississippi State in a 16-12 win over North Carolina State had 38 pickets by two civil rights groups over Mississippi State's participation in the game, but also a poor attendance of 8,300.

But needless to say, Philly has never had a problem selling America's Game. It should be the permanent home for Army and Navy to do battle each season.

The Heisman Trophy is for the best player not the best character guy

I got home from the Army-Navy game in time to watch the Heisman Trophy presentation ceremony. Not that I expected to be surprised. Cam Newton looked like a runaway winner before his plane landed in New York.

I've read the arguments against voting for Newton, who would have been the second-highest vote getter in Heisman history had he not been left off more than a hundred ballots, and I find them silly. The Heisman is supposed to be awarded to the best player in college football.

We can debate what that means, but to me it means: would the winner's team have won as much without him? It's an important question, especially when the voters went for USC tailbacks from the late Sixties through the early Eighties. I'm not saying that the four backs who won: Mike Garrett, O.J. Simpson, Charles White and Marcus Allen, didn't deserve the trophy, but it sure looked like USC had some great offensive linemen who made their statistics possible.

In Cam Newton's case, the answer's no. Auburn went 8-5 without Newton last season--the man was in junior college last year--and they didn't lose very much while upgrading at the quarterback position. The Tigers had only two players selected in the 2010 NFL draft. Running back Ben Tate went to Houston in the second round and corner Walter McFadden went to Oakland in the fifth, while All-Conference defensive end Antonio Coleman was signed as a free agent.

The Tigers added a player who accounted for 50 touchdowns: 28 passing, 20 rushing and two receiving. The other Auburn running backs accounted for 21 TDs. I would say that a player who made up all of the passing game and nearly half of the running game made a huge difference in the Tigers' season.

Does Stanford earn their number four ranking without Andrew Luck? Maybe; like Newton he threw for 28 touchdowns this season, breaking the previous Stanford record by one. But he was not as much of a factor in the running game, as Newton was, nor is he playing for a national championship, which Newton is.

I'd understand West Coast voters coming out for Luck. They've seen him more because he plays in the PAC-10, a tough conference. But I'm tired of hearing all of this stuff about integrity and the Heisman. If there is so much concern over the character of the winner, then why haven't past winners who actually committed indiscretions been asked to return the award?

Johnny Rodgers, the 1972 Heisman winner, robbed a gas station with friends during his freshman year at Nebraska. He did not serve any jail time, but was sentenced to two years' probation. In addition to winning the Heisman, Rodgers was on a national championship team and was the first player selected in his NFL draft class. In 1987, Rodgers attacked a cable TV repairman and in 1989, he and others in a Nebraska sports marketing firm were separately fined $10,000 by the Texas secretary of state for contacting Heisman winner Andre Ware before his eligibility ended. Rodgers also bought Ware's mother a fur coat. Needless to say, Johnny Rodgers has never been asked to return his Heisman.

Billy Cannon, the 1959 Heisman winner, and the only Louisiana State University player to have his number retired, secretly signed two pro contracts after his eligibility ended. He signed one with the Los Angeles Rams for $50,000, then another with the AFL Houston Oilers for $100,000 including a chain of gas stations. Cannon earned a dentistry degree from the University of Tennessee while playing, then completed two other degrees to become an orthodontist. In 1983, Cannon was tried and convicted in a counterfeiting operation and sentenced to five years in prison. In 1986, he declared bankruptcy and sold his Heisman to a restaurateur. The Heisman committee has never asked for it back.

George Rodgers, the 1981 Heisman winner was twice implicated on charges of possession of cocaine, the first time as a player in 1982, the second time in 1990 while working as a fund raiser for the University of South Carolina, where he played. Rodgers was never asked to return his Heisman.

Then of course, there is O.J. Simpson. After he was sentenced in his civil trial he sold his Heisman. He's serving a thirty-three year prison term. The Heisman committee never tried to recover his trophy.

Lastly, there is Reggie Bush, who was asked, not forced, to return his Heisman. He returned it voluntarily.

Cam Newton will probably be picked in the top half of the first round of the 2011 NFL Draft. He has the skills to have a great pro career. His attitude during his junior season was never a question, so it's doubtful this will be a concern in the pros. Hopefully he will never get in any trouble after he leaves campus. But, no matter what happens, he should keep his Heisman. He was the best player in 2010. No one can ever take that way from him.

New Jersey GOP legislators want to pull the Parent Trigger

Today I read that New Jersey Republican state senator Joseph Kyrillos, who represents my former home county, will introduce his proposed version of the Parent Trigger, which became law in California at the beginning of this year.

As I wrote in a previous post, the California law is being tested for the first time to force a decision on change in a Los Angeles-area middle school. In this case, the effort towards change is being led by a charter school advocacy group.

Kyrillos' bill, which he has called the Parent Empowerment and Choice Act, goes beyond the California law, as well as proposals in other states, by adding school vouchers as a possible remedy for dissatisfied parents. This bill would apply only to schools where less than 60 percent of the students pass the state’s math and language arts tests for two straight years, or two-thirds of students fail one of the two tests for two years.

While Sen. Kyrillos' bill is complementary to an ongoing legislative proposal for vouchers, I keep going back to a major question: would every student in the failing school be either relocated to a better school or attend a reorganized school? My hunch is no.

Reorganizing the failing school as a charter school would not necessarily mean that all of the students in that failing school would be subject to charter school practices.

Suppose--and this would be a quite legitimate act in an urban center--that the charter school is meant to serve students who live beyond the neighborhood boundaries of a failing school and must use a lottery to whittle down a long list of applicants. What happens to the failing students who attended the failing school who lose out?

It's an important question. A charter operator is quite likely to be a corporation, for-profit or non-profit that is not likely to want to take over a school "as-is." The charter school operator would be subject to the same "failure rates" as Senator Kyrillos has proposed; they would not want all of the students who caused the failure. Why would they risk losing state or foundation funding?

Suppose vouchers are an option. The current legislative proposal would not allow receiving parochial, private or public schools out-of-district to discriminate against students on the basis of their academic or athletic abilities, as well as race. However, that proposal does not forbid the parochial schools from discrimination on the basis of religion.

Most likely vouchers would be used to cover parochial school tuition in New Jersey, if for no other reason, there are more parochial schools than private schools in the communities that have failing public schools.

The nearby public school districts will likely say that there is no room for non-resident students or they will consider the state's tuition payments to be too low to support the cost of educating them. Given Governor Christie's cuts in aid to schools as well as locally-imposed cuts put in place to hold down property taxes, it's likely that a well-to-do public school system will want to charge non-residents as much as they can, assuming they take non-residents in the first place.

Parochial schools, like private schools and public charter schools are not constrained by neighborhood boundaries. It is quite likely that a voucher policy will help them attract applicants from not one, but several failing public schools. Quite possibly they will get more applicants than they can actually enroll. A parochial school, as I follow New Jersey's voucher proposal, would be able to discriminate first on the basis of religion. Some families will be left out.

Under Senator Kyrillos' proposed legislation, as well as California's law, there is a third remedy: replace the principal. This is, of course, the least expensive option as well as the least disruptive for parents who would prefer to have their children educated in the public school closest to home.

But here's the next question: will parents, who have become more active decision-makers, have a say in the selection of a new principal, or will that be entrusted to the superintendent of schools and the school board? Most likely the latter. Worse yet, if the law does not define "parent" as someone with a child enrolled in a failing school, then you have situations where anyone with a beef with a principal can chime in.

The more I read about parent trigger laws, the more I am convinced that public schools need to adopt the best practices of the private schools and charter schools. You can have all of the vouchers and charter schools you want, and you will still have students left behind.

Dissolve central offices and elected school boards, at least in suburban districts. Give each principal their data and their budget and let her set a course with teachers and interested parents as a school-centered governing body. If that direction leads to failure, then restructure, sell or close down. If a school cannot be governed on its own, then you need a remedy for each and every student. That remedy is more likely to be new teachers and new leadership.

School-centered governance has been the practice of effective private schools for more than two centuries, as well as today's charter schools. Why can't individual public schools operate that way, too?

Can BYU football pack in the subway alumni on their way to independence success?

With all of the movement of college sports programs between conferences, the decision of Brigham Young University to become a football independent beginning next season has gone less reported. Too bad: it's a brilliant business move.

According to the university's Web site, BYU signed an eight-year agreement with ESPN to televise every one of their football games on their family of networks or on the university network BYUtv. BYUtv alone airs into 55 million homes every month It is also on the basic tier of both Dish and DirectTV and is carried by more than 500 cable systems..

With this decision, BYU is about to become another "America's Team," much like Notre Dame, West Point or Annapolis. BYU gains several advantages through this deal. They can set their own schedule with no concern over conference opponents. Most likely, they would still play Utah, in order to maintain an interstate rivalry, and possibly Boise State to maintain a regional one. Otherwise, they could draw well playing West Coast and Texas powers. BYU will also keep all of their bowl and television revenues, instead of sharing them with the other schools in their conference.

And why not? There are more than 5.5 million members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, which also operates the university, living in the U.S. Mormons represent the fourth largest individual denomination in the country. After Catholics, the LDS Church is the largest religion by number in ten U.S. states.

Notre Dame and BYU are private, church-affiliated and regularly targeted by on-campus corporate recruiters. They both built winning football traditions that started with their most successful coaches: Knute Rockne for Notre Dame, Lavell Edwards for BYU. Both universities fielded national championship teams during the 1980's.

But these schools are different in the way they do business.

Notre Dame ranks among U.S. News and World Report's top twenty national research universities. It accepts less than thirty percent of all applicants within a very tight ACT range of 31 to 34. Notre Dame is not cheap: it costs approximately $50,000 for tuition, room and board. Approximately half of its 8,400 undergraduates receive financial aid, including student loans. With a student body of one-third to one-half the size of most large state universities, Notre Dame does not have as large an alumni body as some may think. But football has brought in thousands of subway alumni since Rockne's days when the Irish regularly played Army at Yankee Stadium.

Brigham Young, the largest religiously affiliated university in country has over 33,000 students; it's student body has more than doubled in size over the past 50 years. Those students pay approximately approximately $4,400 in tuition if they are members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, twice that amount if they are not. Even the non-church tuition is lower than the in-state tuition for the flagship state universities in most states. The church ties are very strong: all but one and a half percent of all students are so affiliated.

But BYU, like Notre Dame, will need to develop casual alumni relationships when they play football outside the Mountain States. While there are more than 5 million members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, more than a third of them live in Utah. Another third live in five other states: California, Idaho, Arizona, Washington and Texas. They could succeed in the West Coast markets, but can they do well in Dallas or Houston, or anything further east? And will they get the same considerations for BCS bowl eligibility that have been given to Notre Dame?

Time will tell, though you can't blame BYU for trying. These days you need a thicker wallet to play football.

New Jersey teachers need more tweaks on tenure policy

Yesterday the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) proposed several management reforms including the reassignment of teacher dismissal cases from an administrative law judge to a neutral, nationally certified arbitrator. This would speed the review of cases of conduct, inefficiency, incapacity and other just cause incidents involving tenured teachers, but reviews are still unrelated to poor performance in the classroom.

I agree that if education reform is to be successful in New Jersey, or any other state, the teachers must participate in policy development. The NJEA's proposal would cut legal and administrative costs, and it would save time, but it does not help assure that tenured teachers will also be the most effective teachers. It will rid a district of the more obvious bad apples that go reported by their peers or immediate superiors.

There are alternatives to tenure. One, which is likely to be unpopular in New Jersey, is to offer renewable contracts to individual teachers. In Massachusetts, teachers who would have previously received tenure, often known as employment for life, receive five-year renewable contracts instead. The term tenure was also replaced with "Professional Teacher Status." Teacher dismissal is subject to arbitration, the process desired by the NJEA.

But Massachusetts is now working through the process of determining what is an "effective teacher," which will be very difficult, as more than half of the Bay State's teachers neither teach subjects nor grades that are affected by state standardized tests.

Delaware school districts will still grant tenure to teachers under the state's Race to the Top proposal, among the first two funded by the U.S. Department of Education. However, teachers must receive a rating of "effective" for at least two of their first three years.

Under a statewide evaluation standard set six years ago in The First State, teacher rankings are assigned by a formula that looks at five components: lesson planning, classroom environment, instruction, professional responsibilities and student improvement. A task force of 400 teachers is working to develop standards that constitute "satisfactory growth," though student test scores will be part of teacher evaluations.

The best course of action for New Jersey would probably be to combine the ideas in the Delaware plan with a mandatory teacher development program jointly funded by the state department of education and the teacher's union to give the newest teachers a chance to succeed.

Effectiveness is not something that will be innate to every first year teacher, but those who want to teach and willing to work to get better will have a fairer chance. The last thing our school systems should do is throw newly trained teachers into the toughest classrooms with no continued support. The next-to-last thing they should do is make tenure automatic, backed by a lame dismissal policy.

The Knicks forgotten champion

Here's a sport's trivia question: Name the only person who played on two NBA championship teams and also played on a championship team owned by the late George Steinbrenner.

The answer is Dick Barnett,who played guard and forward for the great New York Knicks teams of 1970 and 1973, and also played for Steinbrenner's Cleveland Pipers in the American Basketball League (ABL), a defunct competitor to the NBA that folded after its only season in 1962. Barnett played in all 82 games for the 1970 Knicks at the age of 33, averaging just under fifteen points a game.

Barnett played his college ball at Tennessee State University, where he was part of three NAIA championship teams under John McClendon, the most successful black head coach through the Fifties and Sixties, an era when black players were not allowed to play for the major college programs.

After being selected as the fourth played of the NBA draft in 1959, Barnett played his first two pro seasons for the Syracuse Nationals, who later became the Philadelphia 76ers. In 1961, he jumped to the Pipers to play for his college coach, and became the second-leading scorer in the ABL, averaging more than 26 points per game.

By going to Cleveland, Barnett also became the first free agent ever signed by George Steinbrenner. After Steinbrenner passed away this July, Barnett, in an interview with a reporter for Syracuse.com said:

“I never had a problem with the man,” he said. “But then, I was leading the team in scoring. George didn’t know a lot about basketball, but he knew enough to leave me alone.”

In 2007 Barnett and McClendon were both inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame. Barnett was the seventh player on the 1970 and 1973 Knicks to be so honored. The others honorees are Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere, Walt Frazier, Jerry Lucas, Earl Monroe and Willis Reed.

Why am I writing about Dick Barnett on an education site?

The answer: after he retired as a player and coach, Barnett became an educator.

Barnett earned a Master's degree in Public Administrator from NYU while playing for the Knicks. After he retired, he completed a doctorate in education at Fordham University. He later taught sports management at St. John's University. Three years' ago. He also became president of the Athletic Role Model Institute, a non-profit that focused on the education of at-risk students. Barnett also wrote four books, including a book of poetry. In 2007 he published The Athlete Negro: The Awakening under his own imprint: Fall Back Baby Productions.

Barnett's accomplishments are more significant in that he had first left college without completing his degree. He went back to school while playing for the Los Angeles Lakers from 1962 through 1965.

I don't follow pro basketball much these days, but I was a huge Knicks fan when those championship teams took the court. I have been fortunate to meet three of the players: Bill Bradley, Earl Monroe and Willis Reed on separate occasions long after they had retired. And now, I will not forget about number 12 on those teams: Dick Barnett.

California's Parent Trigger Law, community action supported by conservatives for choice

Today I've read about a law that took effect in California in January--boy, I waited too long on this one--that allows parents to successfully petition their school board to shut down, change management or convert a public school to a charter school by a vote of 51 percent or more. The law was tested earlier this year at a Los Angeles area middle school.

For a school to be eligible for takeover under the parent trigger law they must meet criteria that include:
+ Being labeled a "program improvement" school for more than three consecutive years for failing to meet federal academic benchmarks.
+ Having an Academic Performance Index (the state's benchmark test) of less than 800, based on the state's ranking system that ranges from 200 to 1,000 points.
+ Being among the lowest 5 percent of schools in California.

These standards were probably written into the law to help prevent overzealous parents from asking for change because they do not like a particular teacher or principal. It is just as easy for parents to demand change at a good or sufficiently performing school, as it is for them to demand change at a poor-performing one.

There are some problems with this law. One is that parents, eligible petitioners, do not need to have students enrolled in a particular school. They may be voters who live in a district, who might have never been served by the school, which might be in another neighborhood. Second, it favors schools with better organized parents. A poor-performing school in a working class neighborhood or a poverty-ridden neighborhood might not have the community chops nor the time to make a successful petition. Lastly, a parents group might be dragged into action by other organizations that have a different agenda.

I do, however, see the potential for such a law to succeed elsewhere, in areas where a county-wide district, such as Los Angeles's, governs schools as opposed to a city administration.

There is conservative support for the "parent trigger," because it may lead to more charter schools or more school choices, which may also include home schooling, online education, and vouchers to attend privately supported schools.

All of this is well and good, as long as every student in that poor performing school has an educational option that their parents are comfortable with. Not every parent is capable of home schooling, not every student is capable of learning behind a computer at home, and not every family can make up the difference in costs of a private school that are not covered by public assistance.

But this is the problem with conservative choice-related policies. They allow more freedom for those who are the most knowledgeable about their options and can afford to make a choice. These same people include those who would parents who would prefer to send their children to a private or religiously affiliated school under any circumstance. They have always had that right, as long as they recognized that other families who live in less desirable circumstances deserved to have educated children, too.

Which takes me back to a point I've raised for years. The fairest policy would be to eliminate a central office and school board, at least in a suburban community, hire a dean of instruction to enforce and interpret core standards for the mayor, council and business administrator as well as a parent's liaison to help inform families about schools in the area.

Neighborhood boundaries would fall as public schools elementary and middle schools would be autonomous; they would have to compete against other for students, while adhering to a local wage structure and core educational standards. And, in the case of districts that presently allow access to only one regional high school, laws can be rewritten to allow a choice of two or three public options.

Current practices, where a school board of parents and active citizens can tell parents where their child must go to school; teacher's contracts which limit professional mobility; and curricula set from a central office without teacher input are the problems that must be solved. They will not be solved by standardized tests and policies that offer choice for some, but not for all.

The solutions that have been offered: more permissive laws towards homeschooling, charters, vouchers and online education, are not necessarily bad for those who are well-to-do or in the know. But they have also led to very divisive political battles, as those with vested interests try to protect their turf. However, these policies, even taken together, still leave children behind. The people who lead public schools at all levels are responsible for educating everyone, not just providing escape hatches for unhappy parents.

Wharton becomes ready to satisfy seven year educational itch

This morning I read that the internationally respected Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania will offer alumni an opportunity to take executive education courses for no charge, beginning seven years after graduation.

According to this story, there are 800 current MBA students at Wharton. The school administration claims that each of them can be accommodated in the future because there is always room in the current executive education courses. Approximately 25,000 students have gone through at least one executive education course; these typically run for a week on campus. Executive education is a continually expanded market, not only for Wharton, but also for many other business schools across the country.

Not only does this decision make Wharton a better value when compared to other top business schools, it also validates an emphasis on lifelong learning. Business practices change frequently, just as technology changes, and executives do not always have time to keep up. Unless they take a break, which Wharton provides in settings that are considered lavish for an educational institution.

I do not expect Wharton to be the only school to head this route. Other private universities in urban settings: Harvard, Northwestern, Chicago, Columbia and NYU being good examples, could succeed with this approach. They have the endowments and corporate connections to subsidize future executive classes, and they have students close by.

Book Reviews--Two Arkansas sports stories

I doubt that its possible to read a sports book that is set in the Deep South or the Southwest without learning about the obstacles black students, athletes and non-athletes faced just in going to school every day. These two books, one creative non-fiction, the other a biography, are no exception. Both of them teach you a little more about sports, but a little more history as well.

Set in Little Rock, Jay Jenning's Carry the Rock, focuses on the city's Central High School. In 1957, Central High was the site where former governor Orville Faubus refused to allow nine black students to enter the building. President Eisenhower sent federal troops to campus to intervene and allow the students to go to class. Today there is a statue on campus of the nine students waiting to enter the main building.

Jenning's story also covers football, so it is important to note that, as a condition for admission, these nine students were not allowed to participate in sports or other extracurricular activities, as they had been allowed to do in a separate blacks-only school. The following year Faubus ordered the school closed, though athletic teams were allowed to continue play.



The story of Central High begins thirty years earlier when the building is first open, and is sited as a "state of the art" educational facility for the nation, let alone Arkansas. Today, Central High is still regarded as one of the leading academic schools in the country, according to Newsweek magazine's published rankings.

However, the author points out that academics are still largely segregated. The school was a football power at the get-go; it's major rivalry was against Pine Bluff. Today there are more rivals, including other public high schools. One, Pulaski High, was opened as a private "segregation academy," a reaction to the demands for integration. Pulaski High is now better known as the school that has produced Mitch Mustain, one of the best home-grown quarterbacks in Arkansas history. His coach, Gus Malzahn, will lead the offense for Auburn University as they play for a national championship next month.

The central figure of this story, Bernie Cox, coached at Central High from 1975 through last year. His first quarterback, Houston Nutt, has gone on to be a successful college coach. The progress and regression of Cox's team is sufficiently covered, but more interesting is the environment around them.

After 1957, through the passage of national civil rights laws and federal desegregation acts, the Little Rock school system was a frequent target of legal action as well as strife among the members of the school board, even as this city's population shifted towards black residents. A highway extension proposed during the 1970's, and completed during the 1980's, also opened racial wounds. It took decades before the public school system was considered to be unitary, meaning that it complied with federal laws with respect to integration.

The other book, Forty Minutes of Hell, is the biography of former Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson. The first black head coach in the Southwest Conference--Arkansas is now in the Southeastern Conference in all sports--Richardson was raised in a Mexican neighborhood in El Paso, Texas. He encountered better treatment while living among Mexicans than most black Texans did while living among whites.



Written by a former college coach-turned writer, Rus Bradford, the story details Richardson's life and coaching career, devoting the most space to the coach's difficult relationship with Frank Broyles, then the university's athletic director. In 1964, Broyles was the coach of Arkansas's only national championship football team; it's roster included future coach and FOX broadcaster Jimmy Johnson and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. He was also the last Southwest Conference coach, as well as the last coach at an Arkansas college, to integrate his team, though he had coached black players, including Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers, in a college all-star game.

Richardson, a two-sport athlete, played baseball and basketball at Texas Western. later renamed the University of Texas at El-Paso (UTEP). He was considered a prospect in three professional sports, offered contracts in basketball, baseball and football, and was in the camps of the AFL San Diego Chargers and the ABA Dallas Chaparrals, though he was injured. In basketball he played for Hall of Fame coach Don Haskins, who was the first college coach to put five black players on the court for a NCAA National Championship Game. Richardson was a senior at Texas Western at the same time those future national champions were freshmen.

Richardson went on to become the first black head coach at all three stops in his career: Western Texas College (a two-year school), the University of Tulsa and the University of Arkansas. At every stop he had his battles, but he also won friends by winning over seventy percent of his games. In 1994, he was a national champion at Arkansas. Eight years later, he would be fired.

The story presents considerable debate about Richardson's intentions following a 2002 press conference at which he said, in frustration, that the school could take his job, though they would have to honor the balance of his contract. By then, Richardson had been regarded as a coach who was extremely sensitive to any comments resembling racial slurs. Yet, he was also regarded as capable of numerous acts of kindness, including his charity work to fight leukemia, the disease which killed his only daughter.

Richardson's relationship with Frank Broyles had been tenuous for seventeen years. However, not only was Richardson the athletic director's first black coaching hire; he also had the longest tenure of any coach, black or white, that Broyles had hired. During Richardson's seventeen years as basketball coach, Broyles had canned several football coaches, including Orange Bowl-winner Lou Holtz. Yet when Broyles appointed Richardson as an assistant athletic director, with no addition pay or responsibilities, the coach viewed that as a token act of gratitude.

After leaving Arkansas, paid not to coach, Richardson retired to farm life and went on to coach the Panamanian and Mexican national teams. Last season, he was named head coach of the WNBA's Tulsa Shock. In 2009, he was inducted in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. One of the guests who got in line to congratulate him was recently-retired Frank Broyles.

What education programs does Finland have that the U.S. does not?

Last week I mentioned an Atlantic Monthly story that ranked, among other things, ranked schools by country as well as the fifty U.S. states, by the percentage of students that had attained advanced proficiency in mathematics. Finland ranked fourth behind Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea.

The authors of this story cited studies that mentioned that diversity has little to no impact on the ranking of U.S. students when compared to other countries. Their argument: even U.S. educational systems that are purported to be good to very good often are not, when measured by test results across countries. But the story does not answer one question: what do these countries do that the U.S. does not? I decided to take a look at Finland.

Finnish families, unlike American families, have universal access to day care as well as to pre-school. Both are treated on a state-by-state basis in the U.S. Finnish families also have access to free kindergarten; this has been a fairly recent trend in the U.S. However, Finnish students begin their formal schooling at age seven, versus age six in the U.S.

Finnish education is tied to core standards; this has been a very recent effort in the U.S., however teachers are given the freedom to choose their own texts and school boards do not inspect classrooms. Teacher autonomy is challenged frequently by parents in the U.S., including those parents who serve on school boards.

Finnish education schools are exceptionally selective. Only ten percent of the 5,000 applications received annually are accepted. Teachers are also required to earn a master's degree to have a permanent job. In the U.S., the concern is that teaching attracts too few of the "best and brightest," unless you consider Teach for America. Teachers in the U.S. do not need a master's degree to be awarded tenure, but the masters is a credential for promotion.

Finnish schools have no mandatory tests or examinations, while testing has become the accepted practice in U.S. schools. With no mandatory tests, teachers do not need to teach to tests. However, in the U.S., tests can be used to define what students are supposed to know when they reach a certain grade level.

Finland as well as other Scandinavian countries: Denmark, Norway and Sweden are very design-oriented. Art and other visual experiences are very important to education, and that is extended into facilities design for schools. In the U.S., is pretty much agreed that unattractive and unsanitary facilities are unacceptable for learning, yet they are allowed to remain in use.

Finnish students take a national examination for admission to universities, just as U.S. students take the SATs or ACTs. However, the universities also have their own entrance examinations, which cannot be taught through a preparatory course. But Finnish students pay no tuition for their education at a public university or polytechnic institute. In the U.S. tuition at public universities is set by the school, with approval from state government. It is safe to say, however, that free tuition is a powerful incentive to get people to study for an education.

Obviously Finland is a much smaller country than the United States, and their citizens do not have the same political beliefs as U.S citizens do. But each Finnish policy does have a positive impact on quality schools.

My point: it's up to citizens to decide how much they want to spend on education, and to maintain quality to make sure they are getting their money's worth. I doubt that any U.S. public school system, no matter where it is, can cut its way to higher quality by skimping on the classroom experience or micromanaging it to death.

Book Review--Dirty Sexy Politics by Meghan McCain

Ok, some of you may ask: Am I really taking taking this book seriously?

The answer is yes. Among the subjects regularly covered on this site are education and entry level employment. This is a story of a potential first daughter, then a recent graduate of Columbia University, and her journey on the campaign trail. Meghan attempted to cover the campaign on behalf of her father through a blog, McCainBloggette.com that she self-financed and shared responsibility with two college friends. The GOP invested nothing in her site.

Meghan McCain, daughter of U.S. Senator and former Republican presidential candidate John McCain is as credible an observer of the 2008 presidential campaign as Alexandra Pelosi, political filmmaker and daughter of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Not to mention, aside from brief references to fashion labels, the content of this book does not stray far from politics and campaigning.

Unlike her father, Ms. McCain is a moderate Republican, supportive of gay rights and same-sex marriage, though pro-life, who is bothered by the right-learning direction of her party. Meghan believes, like her father, in limited government, so she does not wish to switch her party affiliation. She prefers to argue, as former New Jersey governors Tom Kean and Christie Whitman, that the Republican Party should be more inclusive and open to new ideas. A right-leaning GOP, she adds, will not be attractive to Millennial voters. Four years earlier, she adds, she registered as an Independent voter, and voted for Democrat John Kerry.

Ms. McCain also discussed her family's relationship with the Palin family during the campaign. While they initially appeared overwhelmed by the attention thrust upon them, Meghan adds that they were soon treated as the stars of the show by various political handlers. It was as if her father had won the nomination, but his vice presidential candidate was treated as the standard bearer of a conservative party ticket, and that the crowds she drew were used to show her father's conservative chops.

Ms. McCain does an excellent job discussing the role of handlers, image consultants brought on to advise the candidate and their family on appearance and body language. She contends that handlers, regardless of their views, espouse a "model" for a teenage candidate's daughter which made her feel uncomfortable when appearing with her parents. Meghan was eventually given her own campaign bus and staff, as well as a separate schedule of speeches. She appeared, from reading this story, to enjoy that freedom. The handlers were satisfied, too. They had considered her a liability because of her blonde hair and fashion sense.

As her story winds down, she takes us to Election Day, knowing that her father has lost, she makes another point where I strongly agree. Barack Obama won because he ran the better-organized campaign and made better use of the Internet to attract younger voters to organize as well as to vote. Sarah Palin's youth and family could not help her father gain ground, though Meghan casts no blame on them for the defeat.

Dirty Sexy Politics is a very fast and undemanding read. You get far better from the author than you might expect from the title and the cover. Meghan McCain is just as credible as any other pundit who likes to speak their mind, though she's more careful about her words than a Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin.

My letter to the editor for repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Yesterday I received an e-mail through Organizing for American asking me to write a letter to the editor of my area newspaper calling for the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' with respect to gay and lesbian members of the military. I have actively supported repeal, and will keep doing so, but I decided to post my letter here instead. It's more likely to be read by more people on the blog as opposed to my hometown Trenton Times.

Dear Editor:

I am writing as a long-time supporter for repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' a military service policy that has been in place for nearly two decades. The policy was adopted at a time when our president, Bill Clinton supported the inclusion of gays and lesbian in the military, but military leadership, Congress and public polls did not. Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a compromise, and it has resulted in the separation of more than 13,000 military members who otherwise served honorably.

In 1993, when Don't Ask, Don't Tell was signed into law, the United States was not at war. Military personnel, as well as civilians who worked alongside them, were offered early retirement. Others found more lucrative work in the private sector during a peacetime economy. That also was my first year working after I had finished business school. I had the opportunity to meet and work with former officers who, like me, had recently completed their education.

Seventeen years later, our military face greater challenges, not only at war but also providing humanitarian assistance around the world. U.S. military personnel serve not only in Afghanistan, but in more than 100 countries. The major reason: the United States is the only country in the world that can manage a complex economy and a strong military at the same time. Military expertise, which extends to emergency assistance, is a competitive advantage of our nation. And we cannot forgot, there are more than one and a half million men and women in our armed forces who chose to serve who may be asked to put their lives on the line.

Now that Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been successfully challenged in federal court, a challenge initiated partly by members of the Republican Party, repeal is supported at the top of the military chain of command--President Obama, Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen, and the military's own survey of 400,000 personnel shows little opposition, it has shifted from being a gay rights issue to an issue about patriotism.

Any able-bodied man or woman who wants to serve, especially in time of need, should be free to live their private lives openly without fear of dismissal or harassment. He or she should not be excluded; organizations, in fact, become more effective when they are more inclusive. This has proven to be true in corporate America--those people you decide to include also become your customers--and it has also become true in the military as it has become a more welcoming employer to blacks and to women over the past seven decades. That transition has not been easy in the military culture, but in spite of hostile "traditions," more chose to serve.

Any lawmaker who favors the continuance of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, even after evidence to the contrary that it has failed, should ask themselves: would I refuse to legislate beside a person who is in a same-sex relationship or, if I ran a business or a government agency or non-profit, would I refuse to hire someone who is?

If the answer is yes, consider this: platoon sergeants, the first level of leadership for newly enlisted personnel, are responsible for preparing their charges for the harsh realities of battle. They have to make them more alert, make them stronger, teach them to function as a team, and spot potential leaders who will make the team better.

Platoon sergeants are not, however, responsible for making soldiers become just like them in terms of politics, religion or moral values, which are considered personal and private. I can only wish that the politicians who would like to see people become more "like them" in terms of politics, religion and moral values would understand this principal, too.

School Pride well intentioned but badly flawed TV

I've spent part of the past three weeks catching up on episodes of School Pride, an NBC reality television show where schools and their communities--parents, teachers and students--are the stars. School Pride follows the Extreme Home Makeover format: a team of "experts" comes in with corporate sponsors and rehabilitates a deteriorated building within a week to ten days. Sadly, the executive producer of this show, Denise Cramsey, passed away last week after suffering a brain aneurism.

School Pride attempts to send a message: that clean and safe schools will lead to happier students and better academic performance. That's hard to dispute, but the reality TV format distorts the message. All of the schools featured already had their community--it was a requirement to be a host site--they just had a rotted building.

Three episodes I watched featured big city schools in Detroit and Los Angeles, two being performing arts schools; the third being part of a public-private partnership initiated by the mayor. Another was a Nashville area elementary school rendered unfit for occupancy after a flood, and the last, and most impressive "change" was a small high school in the Southern California desert.

Personally, I thought the show had four problems off the bat.

It was on the wrong network. ABC owns and syndicates Extreme Home Makeover while NBC has School Pride. If ABC had the show,it could have been moved to ABC Family if it failed on the main network. It could have been repeated often enough for its message to become clear. School Pride would not fit into Bravo TV's reality programming of cooking,fashion and relationship shows.

Next, School Pride got a horrible time slot. A school-focused show on a Friday night--after school is over for the week? I don't think anyone could get people excited about fixing up school buildings on the second most relaxing night of the week, when parents and kids are more likely to stay away from the TV. After all, you don't see Friday Night Football, even during the playoffs. Friday's the night when fans are more likely to go to the game.

The third problem was the school selection, though the producers got this partially right. They should have stayed away from urban schools and concentrated exclusively on smaller cities and towns. The big city school systems have their own corporate alliances; they are more likely to find money when there is a pet project to make buildings spic and span. It would take a miracle for a small town with no corporate leadership to find the muster the resources and find whatever money they could. The show would have a more positive impact on a national audience if viewers saw that the only public high school for miles was undergoing a high-profile remake, than it would in a city where the school board could send the students to another school.

Lastly, one cast member, political reporter Jacob Soboroff, hurt the main message by interviewing politicians such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa by asking them why their host schools had reached such deteriorated states. The politicians said the obvious: lack of parental involvement, poverty, poor teachers, lackadaisical management. I sat thinking: "oh gee, give a forum to trash the people who are trying." At least the producers showed the foresight not to send Soboroff to see Detroit mayor Dave Bing. If they did, and Bing stared him down, I would not have blamed the mayor one bit.

Soboroff was no better with the school board president in Needles, California. In the episode that focused on Needles High School, the small college-prep/vo-tech school in the California desert, he attempts to corner the school board president over a past decision to rehabilitate a middle school gym instead of addressing the high's schools problems. Maybe that was the only project the district could afford to complete with its own money, but Soboroff pressed and tried to act like the hero. He should be pink-slipped off the show.

Fortunately, Needles embraced the spirit of community more than NBC could have ever expected. Graduates from classes as far back as the Sixties came to pitch in and the teachers, students and local construction workers had the skills to make a real difference in the quality of the show. Every school featured in School Pridereceives considerable largess from Home Depot, Wal Mart, General Motors and Microsoft--product placements are so prominent to the point of looking silly when the show's cast uses On-Star to find their way back to a school--but Needles High was the place where it will make the most difference.

I don't know how long School Pride will remain on the air. But I would love to see a Where Are They Now episode or magazine feature spread within five to ten years after the program goes off line.

My hunch is that Needles High School will have made the best progress, followed by the once-flooded elementary school in Tennessee; they will be in fine shape, too. The urban schools, however, will become stymied by political jealousy as they have been for decades. Five years from now, they will be using the same Microsoft technology suite they got through the show while the mayor keeps trying to woo Bill Gates, their governor, the federal government as well as Home Depot and Wal Mart to throw millions more at their school system. Some problems cannot be fixed with seven days on the clock.