Adam Wren at Indianapolis Monthly writes a compelling account of the search for the emails that embarrassed star “reformer” Tony Bennett and caused him to resign as Commissioner of Education in Florida.
As you may recall, Bennett was upset by Democratic educator Glenda Ritz in the fall elections in 2012, although he spent ten times as much as she.
Bennett was a superstar in the rightwing privatization movement and was quickly hired as state commissioner in Florida. But last summer, a treasure trove of emails were reported by AP investigative reporter Tom LoBianco, showing that Daniels had manipulated the A-F grading system to protect a charter school founded by one of his biggest campaign contributors. As a result of his largesse, the school received an A (the latest state report lowered its grade to an F).
But how did LoBianco get the emails?
That is the meat of this article.
What is fascinating, to me at least, is that the Bennett crowd cries foul because the emails were discovered, not because of what was said in them. They blame the Ritz team for leaking the emails, even though there is a law in Indiana that all official correspondence should be released on request. They think that once the damning emails were deleted, no one should have been able to find them. It’s not fair! they say.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, sociopaths never regret their lies, they only regret getting caught.
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….and masters of setting up distractions.
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While the article is fascinating and valuable, note that it is cast in the form of a game with roving bands of political hacks taking pot shots at each other [think merry pranksters in a paintball skirmish].
Public education, school staffs, students, parents, communities, this nation—just collateral, often unmentioned, damage.
😎
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I take back SOME of the mean things I have said about the media. If ONLY we had more of this kind of reporting, not only on the school issues about which we care so very much, but about so much in politics today. The Constitution gives the media special rights and attention. If one has read the “Columbia Journalism Review” over a period of a decade or more and has seen what has happened TO the media, then one can understand better my foregoing remarks. It is ESSENTIAL that THEY do their jobs but great reporters have been removed etc etc.
Thankfully there ARE reporters who have carried on their GREAT traditions but just as it is difficult for teacher to operate under conditions which they are forced to work, so too has it become difficult for the great reporters to do their job AND stay employed. We are NOT alone in facing the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”.
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We need a hellovalot more brave investigative journalists in the country.
Why isn’t the lid being blown off of…
The secrecy around the creation of Common Core State Standards by non educators?
The legality of Arne Duncan meddling in state education matters in RI, NY, and elsewhere?
Hartford CT’s Capital Prep principal Steve Perry jet setting around the country, on the clock, doing private speaking engagements while children at ‘his’ school are forced to sit at The Table of Shame during lunch because they wore the wrong colored belt to school?
Get with it hungry young journalists!
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The tone I got from linked articles is that this was a hit-job on Bennett. Like other public teachers, I celebrated Bennett’s defeat in Indiana and I cheered his resignation in Florida.
But I’m left with the impression [from the backup articles to this one] that uncovering the truth about Bennett was somehow unsavory. Are we still under playground rules where tattling on somebody is considered unpopular, even if the “victim” was doing something wrong?
Since when is uncovering the truth considered a political hit job?
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