Five Best Blogs: Money, School Reform, & Campaign '12

The Perry-Obama education fight The Answer Sheet: As the campaign battle between Obama and Perry heats up, expect education to be part of the fight.

The End of the Era of Accountability? EdNext: The current revolt may not be as populist as it may seem, and the new pushback against accountability may, in fact, be a lot like the original one.

Petition on US Department of Education TeacherKen: Most of what Duncan is doing has not been blessed by the Congress.  What the petition asks could potentially at least start the appropriate discussions. 

K-12 Downsizing NRO:  One can imagine a scenario in which one or several cities emerge as hubs of teaching talent, with large numbers of small firms of specialist teachers contracting with blended schools around the country and around the world. 

How the Kochs Are Ending Public Education Robert Greenwald: The Koch apparatus was trying to rewrite the social contract that made the Wake County school system a magnet for teachers and families and the surrounding communities prosper.  

MORE BELOW

Thank God We've Got Rich People like Whitney Tilson to Buy Influence among Moderate Democrats Tom Hoffman: It's bad enough that the rich can buy so much influence in our system, do we have to thank and congratulate them for it too? 

The Obama Paradox John Thomspon:  President Obama does not want to privatize schools. But, the president has essentially privatized educational policy.

"Great books" that aren't great Slate:  I could never read The Catcher in the Rye; even as an unhappy adolescent I found the voice cloying, annoying, and frankly phony. And for the record, ducks do very well in Central Park in the winter.