A mystery

To me, at least. I missed part of August due to vacation but when I came back, I noticed a void.

Does anyone know what happened to Michael Winerip who was the education guy at the NYT?

I'm seeing articles by Freedman in the NYT. Interesting because I remember some of the people pushing for Freedman included the Thomas B. Fordham Institute guy.

Seeing the Forest on Fordham:

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is not an objective source. See the item below, from Cursor's "Media Transparency" website, which helps you figure out whether the money and ideology behind surprising/counter-intuitive "news" and "studies" you see in the media are suspect.

Their president, Chester E. Finn, is described as "one of the education policy gurus of the conservative movement" - and the conservative movement has made the defunding, degrading and destruction of public education one of their primary priorities. This guy has major "conservative" wingnut foundation credentials... he's an advisory board member of the National Association of Scholars, and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a leading ultra-right wing think tank.

If indeed Freedman replaced Winerip, what of Freedman's connection to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute? Chester Finn, the president of the Thomas Fordham Institute says this

We're not sure if our endorsement helps or hurts, but we'd love to see Samuel Freedman, now filling in for Michael Winerip as the "On Education" columnist for the New York Times, get the job permanently.

http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/gadfly/issue.cfm?id=158#1931

as well as this:

And Samuel Freedman, the superb pinch-hitting education columnist for the Times, points out that "it's risky to draw any conclusions too sweeping and too soon about a phenomenon that lumps together [Theodore Sizer protégé] Dennis Littky and Kristen Kearns Jordan." Littky himself notes that "Charter school legislation is set up to give some freedom and some choice. So that's what's being criticized—a new way of doing things."

http://www.edexcellence.net/institute/gadfly/issue.cfm?id=160

Just curious.