Local educators counter Romney

Yesterday, Mitt Romney came to town to host a lavish million dollar fundraiser at the New Albany home of Lex Wexner. According to news reports, the gathering was a who's who of Ohio's 1%.

Meanwhile, educators gathered in New Albany to hold a press conference to highlight Mitt Romney's anti-teacher, anti-public education agenda.

After the press conference concluded, a handful of Mitt Romney supporters, recruited from a local equestrian club perhaps, showed up late to counter the press conference.

Bloomberg news reports on the somewhat schizophrenic messaging problem Mitt Romney has

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign asked Florida Governor Rick Scott to tone down his statements heralding improvements in the state’s economy because they clash with the presumptive Republican nominee’s message that the nation is suffering under President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the matter. Scott, a Republican, was asked to say that the state’s jobless rate could improve faster under a Romney presidency, according to the people, who asked not to be named.

What’s unfolding in Florida highlights a dilemma for the Romney campaign: how to allow Republican governors to take credit for economic improvements in their states while faulting Obama’s stewardship of the national economy. Republican governors in Ohio, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin also have highlighted improving economies.

Ohio media and now wondering if Ronmey has had similar conversations with Gov. Kasich.

More cheating exposed

No sooner had we pegged cheating scandals as our number 4 story of the year, than a new scandal emerges, this time in Georgia.

A new investigative report details a second major standardized test cheating scandal in a Georgia school system, implicating 49 educators, including 11 principals. A key reason for the “disgraceful” cheating, investigators said, was pressure to meet No Child Left Behind requirements.

The probe (see here and here) by the Georgia governor’s Special Investigators team into cheating in the Dougherty County School System concluded that “hundreds of school children were harmed by extensive cheating.”

“While we did not find that Superintendent Sally Whatley or her senior staff knew that crimes or other misconduct were occurring, they should have known and were ultimately responsible for accurately testing and assessing students in this system. In that duty, they failed,” the 293-page report says.

Wherever we have corporate education reforms we find unsavory corporate behaviors.