Education? Check! Deval's all set

After having de-fanged the education plank of the platform of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, Deval Patrick shocked absolutely nobody by coming out forcefully to widen the flow of public education money to semi-public concerns:

Gov. Deval Patrick hopes to double charter school funding for under-performing districts under new legislation to be announced today, a source said.

The charter school funding bump - from 9 percent of state school funding to 18 percent - is part of a two-pronged plan to increase the Bay State’s chances for a chunk of the $5 billion “Race to the Top” federal funding program.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will join Patrick at the Museum of Science as he announces the bills today. The funding increase could mean 37,000 seats at qualified charter schools would be available, up from the current 10,000.

Patrick will also file the framework for his “readiness schools,” which combine aspects of pilot and charter schools.

This is the good news...Deval's faux readiness schools are exercises to allow pretty much anyone to open up any set of desks and call it a "readiness school", redirected public moneys to all manner of private and semi-private consultants and services.

More importantly for Deval's Obama's Deval's people directing his campaign, it can now seem that Deval Patrick has "taken care of education" as an issue. Far better and easier to talk about charters than talk about the problems of education in an intelligent, mature manner. This is essentially the same cowardice that Menino recently displayed on the issue. Of course, he's taking care of it by embracing a conservative priority that manages to weaken local control of schools, encourage privatization, and weaken unions all at once. I've written enough about the step backwards charters represent over public education, and the unbowed love of them that some Democrats have. I won't repeat myself....