Weekly Columnist Roundup: School Shocker
Jonetta Rose Barras: "The District government is spending millions to send children to a controversial special education residential facility in Massachusetts that uses electric shock to discipline students." Wow. Talk about an opening sentence. Rose Barras dedicated her column this week to the 10 District students who have been sent to the facility -- the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Ma. -- arguing that its unorthodox methods of treatment are reason enough to bring them home. Fortunately, Chancellor Michelle Rhee seems to agree. “It’s nuts on multiple levels,” she said.
Tom Knott: It's tough to know where to start with this week's installment of Tom Knott. What starts out as a criticism of the District's public schools turns into a lesson on the importance of two-parent families and ends as a pessimistic assessment on Chancellor Rhee's chances at meaningful reform. He writes, "Mrs. Rhee and Mr. Fenty are not likely to have an unqualified success because of the city's intractable social pathologies." After reading Knott's rants and raves over the years, we've come to learn that every small nugget of wisdom he has is surrounded by a barrage of sheer verbal insanity. The Washington Times would do well with cutting his columns down to 20 words.
Marc Fisher: According to Fisher, some of the best examples of successful public school systems that the District could learn from are nearby in Fairfax and Montgomery counties. The lessons are quite simple, he notes. "In Washington, the public schools have failed to make the political connection between rich and poor, or between parents and non-parent taxpayers. Unless the District, like its more successful neighbors, provides meaningful alternatives for middle-class, affluent and poor children, the schools will fail to win the political support necessary to improve quality for all."
Harry Jaffe: Still confused about why Mayor Adrian Fenty recently decided to ditch the security detail and start driving himself around town? Jaffe has a few thoughts on the issue this week. "As a metaphor, it reflects a chief executive who likes to drive the government and the people who run it," Jaffe writes. But more practically, he wonders, aren't there some dangers to Fenty's go-it-alone approach? "For a politician who schedules so many public events in the day and often hits at least one community meeting a night, will he ever show up on time? Can he talk on his cell phone and tap away at his Blackberry and not get into a wreck?" We're guessing it's "No" to both.
Colbert King: Pretty much everyone has taken a shot at Michael Vick, and King's Sunday column made him part of the rule, not the exception. Thankfully, King broke away from fellow Post columnist Courtland Milloy and made one thing clear -- "Dogfighting is not, as some animal rights folks have declared, the same as eating bacon." He continues, arguing, "Starving dogs to make them more hungry for the other dog; filing their teeth; leaving them scarred and malnourished; killing losing dogs by drowning, electrocution, strangulation, hanging or shooting -- that's barbaric."
Courtland Milloy: Jumping directly into the fray this week, Milloy makes the case that the violence in our region is as much about guns as it is about culture. Quoting a D.C.-based anti-violence activist, Milloy writes, "'Violence isn't the issue; it's a symptom. It's the result of too many dysfunctional households, failing schools, drug and alcohol abuse and a saturation of music that promotes self-destruction.'"