I can’t take it anymore. Someone must have abducted the folks at Fordham and replaced them with inside the beltway obsessed navel gazers. Who cares (this much) who the next education secretary will be? Four of the last five posts have been about the ed sec naming and about half of all posts in the last few weeks.
If, as John Nance Garner is said to have remarked, the vice-presidency isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit, being education secretary isn’t worth having to drink the bucket. Education secretaries barely have control over a professionalized staff that barely have control over a budget that contributes barely 8% of all education spending. I guess they can use their bully pulpit to influence the agenda for education policy, but almost all of the important education decisions are made by state and local actors.
Someone needs to free Mike, Checker, Sleepy, Grumpy, and Doc (I guess there are 5 because the alliteration works). Free the Fordham Five and bring back an interesting blog!
Update — The rescue team appears to have been successful! Flypaper has just posted 6 items in a row not about the ed sec nomination. Let’s all give thanks for the return of the Fordham Five and an interesting blog over at Flypaper.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Wouldn’t it be nice if that were another “Change” to which we could look forward?
Speaking of navel gazers, no one here in Nevada likes to ask the hard questions, like “If Higher Education needs more funding because $100 million in cuts is just too large…why did you construct a $100 million classroom building that cost $780 a square foot?”
NPRI has to do it for them: http://www.npri.org/blog/higher-priced-education
Thought you all might enjoy that.
By the way, since they can’t live within their means Higher-ed here is raising tuition 25%!
Clare,
You may or may not believe this, but not all of us have wet our pants with excitement about that big-C “Change.”
Jay,
“Who cares (this much) who the next education secretary will be?”
Amen. I just don’t get it. I imagine that Fordham, just like the rest of us, will hear the announcement and go on accordingly. It’s like a group of kids freaking out over potential Christmas gifts. Be patient, unwrap the thing when it comes and get on with it gracefully.