Soon we can forget about Chris Christie. He is term limited. He will be gone.

But here is typical Christie. All state beaches are closed because of a stalemate on the state budget. But Chris Christie went to a state beach with his family because the state owns a beach house. The beach was gloriously empty. Just for him and his family.

He said if you want the use of the beach house, run for governor.

After this incident, his ratings are probably about 10%, if that.

Vintage Christie.

Who owns the world? The Establishment at play, as reported by Politico. Frenemies.

“OUT AND ABOUT IN THE HAMPTONS — LALLY WEYMOUTH held her annual summer party last night at her house in Southampton. There was a long gold carpet entrance from where the parking was to a big tent next to her house. She served champagne, rare filet, fried chicken, cornbread, a big chocolate cake, ice cream and cookies decorated as American flags. Brother Don Graham did a big tribute to toast Lally (whose birthday is tomorrow) and shouted out Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film about how Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham challenged the government for the right to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971 (Tom Hanks is playing Bradlee and Meryl Streep is playing Graham). Don made a big deal that Spielberg was there and jokingly conceived a Spielberg movie about Lally and described the cast (some actors and some in the room).

“– SPOTTED: Jared and Ivanka chatting with Joel Klein and Alan Patricof, Kellyanne Conway on the dance floor, Boyden Gray, Chris Ruddy, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and wife Iris, Katharine Weymouth, Mary Jordan, Richard Cohen, Margaret Carlson, Gillian Tett, Steven Spielberg chatting with Steve Clemons and Robert Hormats, Carl Icahn, Tom Lee (famous for doing a leveraged buyout of Snapple and now lives in Princess Radziwill’s house), Charles Koch, John Paulson, Dina Powell, Richard Edelman, George Soros and his wife Tamiko Bolton, former Florida Gov. and Sen. Bob Graham (Lally’s uncle), her cousin Gwen Graham (who is running for Florida governor), Maria Bartiromo, Ray Kelly, Bill Bratton, Alan Patricof, Jeff Rosen, William Drozdiak, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.).”

This morning, Trump tweeted an old video of himself pummeling a wrestler after the wrestler was thrown out of the ring. The wrestler taking Trump’s blows is labeled CNN.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
7/2/17, 9:21 AM
#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg

I see this as a direct incitement to violence against the media and anyone who dares to criticize King Donald.

I reported this tweet to Twitter as abusive and violent. I said that I, as a writer and critic, feel dupirectly threatened by the violence that this man adores and encourages.

He is a phony hero. He praises the military, but claimed five deferments to avoid the draft. He is a draft dodger.

His attacks on the media are an attack on the First Amendment.

Does he know about the First Amendment?

This man has no dignity. He defines the term “low-life.” He is a national and international embarrassment. As far as I am concerned, he was elected by Putin, and he is #NotMyPresident.

God save our country from this man and the viciousness and ignorance that he represents so well.

I recently read a post by Larry Cuban about the difficulty of “scaling up successful reforms,” and I was reminded how much I dislike the application of industrial terminology to schooling. Larry offers some examples of successful efforts to “scale up,” but I question the effort itself.

While it is possible for schools to adopt and adapt a program or a practice that has worked out for others, the very idea of reproducing cookie-cutter schools designed to get high test scores invalidates the professional wisdom of educators. You can stamp out cars and tools with the right equipment, but you can’t reproduce good schools via mechanical processes.

People who work in business, industry, finance, or the tech sector like to speak of “scaling up,” of “innovation,” of “best practices,” and of “replication,” which they know how to do.

They are frustrated that success in one school is not easily packaged and replicated and scaled up to every school in the district, the state, the nation. They can’t believe how difficult it is to identify and package “best practices.”

The concept of “innovation” is also overrated. It is not innovative to introduce charters and vouchers and for-profit management. All that changes is who gets the money.

One of the reasons the corporate reformers have poured so many millions into KIPP is that KIPP has produced a scaled-up model. There are 150-200 KIPP schools, and they follow a model that is unvarying. The reformers are looking for a template that can be scaled up everywhere.

One of the reasons that corporate reformers want to put kids on computers is that they think this is the way to standardize and replicate and scale up “success,” even though sitting in front of a computer for several hours a day is not what most parents or educators think of as good education.

What they don’t understand is that there are areas of life that are not susceptible to industrial processes.

Can we scale up good families? We know what a good family looks like. Why can’t we make every family look like that? Can we scale up churches? Churches may grow into mega churches, but every church is different, even if they use the same Scripture and liturgy.

We cannot scale up great orchestras. A string quartet will always require four musicians, and there is no way to implement cost savings, or get productivity gains (this is known as Baumol’s Effect). Reformers themselves want their children to have a human teacher with a small class, the smaller the better. But when they think of “scaling up,” they look for mechanical replacements for humans, to cut costs.

Wherever creativity is required, wherever human interactions matter, scaling up remains elusive because it is an industrial process, not a human one.

We have many examples of excellent schools in the public and private sector, and they are very different from each other.

They are successful because of the culture they have created, usually one of respect, ethical behavior, collaboration, and shared values about learning and self-discipline.

You can describe the culture and you can admire the tone of the school, but it is impossible to scale it up to 1,000, 5,000, 99,000 schools.

Teachers can learn from one another. Schools can learn from one another.

They don’t get better by competing. They get better by sharing. Sharing is not the same as “scaling up.”

There will never be a school-in-a-box that works everywhere and produces love of learning, creativity, and all the good things we want for our children and our society.

I got this card from my friend Leonie Haimson. It reminded me of when I could move like the person on the card.

Of course, there was also a great card from Cece Cunningham, with a picture of a gray-haired old lady with a gorgeous body, waist about 24″, in a bikini.. The card says, “Helen ran out of funds halfway through her extreme makeover.”

Last night, I issued a last-minute appeal to help Linda Weber raise the last bit as f money she needed to qualify by midnight, only two-and-a-half-hours to go. She needed $1,100 to reach $120,000.

She did it! You helped to put her over the top!

Linda and Mark Weber thank you. I thank you.

On to win the 7th Congressional District in New Jersey.