The Road to Damascus: New media tactics for education reform this year!!!

The 2014 open season on public education begins officially today, Jan. 2, as the state legislature prepares to open shop next week, Jan. 8.

The year is opening with some interesting changes in "tactics."

The Detroit News editorial called this morning for the state to act cautiously when closing schools to save schools. http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140102/OPINION01/301020023

Wait, what?

This might mark a significant change in campaigning.

Did it dawn on some that the Governor's attempt to "unbundle" Districts might hurt many, including those with some political clout? And, in particular, those walking a very thin political line as we move towards Nov. 2014 and the full on campaign season? If you are a pol in Oakland County, for example, a place that depends on good schools for so much, you have pretty much burned all the teacher and teacher union firework you can in campaigning and are now at the point where you either stop -- or torch your own house (the house is burning Mr. Moss).http://bloomfield-mi.patch.com/groups/ken-jacksons-blog/p/5d98d409-3cac-476c-8c7c-7e687b88a02e

It was one thing to dissolve Saginaw Buena Vista and Inkster.

Pontiac?

That smokes pretty close to home.

The December session ended, we recall, with State Superintendent Mike Flanagan -- flustered and frustrated -- warning Oakland County their sweetheart deal on Pontiac might go bye, bye if they didn't get with the Governor's EAA program.

The News-- the voice of education reform outside The Mackinac Center -- is sending a caution here.

This editorial follows this shocker of a few days ago Jennifer Chambers, the voice of the voice of education reform. Chambers, who has been reporting the EAA as "statewide" a year before the controversial and confusing December session that left it in murky territory, ran this story -- http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131230/SCHOOLS/312300023/1026/schools/Michigan-s-school-recover... -- that suggested not only were things not peaches and cream at the EAA but that educational "experts" might have something to say. This became kind of an issue when the faculty at Eastern Michigan -- the only university willing to charter the EAA -- balked.

Front and center in this Chambers's story, you will note, was Rochester's Tom McMillin, term limited out as a Rep and running for the Senate seat in the 13th District that includes Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham and a few other places that depend on schools.

Mr. McMillin, though, is also one of the most visible anti-public education voices in the state.

What to do?

Head down the road to Damascus.

Ever since the Common Core discussion a few months ago, Mr. McMillin has been refashioning himself as something of the savior of "local control." In the Facebook comments of this story, you will note, he was chiding critics for not condemning a local schoolboard (Detroit) for doing a good job.

That he elides the fact that the Detroit schoolboard was replaced by an EM (again) in 2009 is problematic, of course, but you get the point.

Mr. McMillin has seen the light, he says. Fixing public education, he now seems to think, might involve just a bit more than attacking teachers and closing schools. He has, it seemed, even managed to convince a few at Oakland Schools.

Stranger things have happened. And if any Oakland County politician knows strange, well, it is Tom McMillin.