Ideas: Accountability, Flexibility, & School Lunch

Thanks to Chicago writer Whet Moser for helping me finally understand why I should care about the whole school lunch debate, which as a "serious" education blogger I've generally thought of as silly yuppie parent/ public health stuff.  Not my business.  School lunch is something of a big story in Chicago because not only is the system weaning itself off its infamous daily offering of cheese nachos (remember from last year?) but also experiencing a new mandatory school breakfast program that teachers hate but kids apparently need.  Still, I'm not interested until Moser connects lunch food to something bigger:  "We demand accountability, as we should, but demonstrating accountability calls for data, which calls for standardization, which calls for structure across schools, districts, and even states...That can make it hard to run a "small, nimble operation," whether it's a school or a school cafeteria." (The Other School Reform)