McCain's scandalous education adviser

Here's another story, among so many, about how McCain is far more conservative than he lets on -- he evidently hates public education.

McCain's never come right out and said it, and if he did the BBQ crew would not report it, but when his top education adviser is Lisa Graham Keegan, no other conclusion makes sense.

Rogue Columnist Jon Talton has a great post today about charter-school-profiteer Keegan.

Here's a taste:

The results of Keegan's crusade in Arizona were nothing short of tragic.

Acting as if Arizona public schools were overfed, union-wrecked systems seen in a few big cities back east, she pushed for "school choice" in the form of charters.

Few appear to perform well. Some are prime business ventures for well-connected right-wingers. Many are fly-by-night storefronts with no playgrounds, libraries or cafeterias.

More below the jump  

Keegan was the major promoter of charter schools in Arizona as the state's top education official.

Even the conservative, McCain-loving Arizona Republic saw through her BS:

Before Arizona adopted Keegan priorities such as charter schools and the high-stakes AIMS test, the state ranked below the national average in math, science, reading and writing, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of Education. More than a dozen years later, it still does.

Talton adds more damning stuff:

Arizona has remained near or at the bottom nationally in school funding, class size, teacher pay -- the real metrics necessary for success. Indeed, they are prerequisites for any further reform.

Keegan's charters skimmed public funding that should have gone to public schools. "Choice" and its many fads were part of every excuse in the shameful Legislature to cut education funding for real public schools.

Meanwhile, there is little oversight of how charter money is spent, much less transparency about the owners' connections to legislators and Republican politics. Yet the "charter schools movement" (sounds like something promised by a laxative) is so politically potent that it slaps down any effort at real reform or even examination.

On another level, the charters contribute to the pernicious destruction of the things held in common, for the public good rather than private profit, that built the great America of the 20th century. They masquerade as public schools, with little accountability to the public in many states, and even a successful charter is an educational equivalent of a gated community. Meanwhile, money and power continue to strangle American meritocracy.

Like neocons who are always wrong but never miss a meal, Keegan has made millions from her advocacy of largely ineffective charter schools:

Keegan went on to become head of something called the Education Leaders Council in Washington, D.C. Before the group collapsed in scandal, it was on the gravy train of GOP earmarks. Like the charter schools in Arizona, it's difficult to find anything this organization accomplished.

The Arizona Republic reports:

"In a pair of 2006 reports, the inspector general for the U.S. Education Department said the ELC had used money inappropriately during the time Keegan was its chief executive. The ELC also had a poor financial-management system and inadequate written procedures for subcontracting, the reports said.

"Even before the report, the Arizona Republic reported that some ELC board members were alarmed about Keegan's $235,000 salary and six-figure deals for other executives. During a three-year span beginning in 2003, eight members of the ELC's board of directors quit, along with four of its top executives, including Keegan, the auditors wrote."

Somehow she landed back in Phoenix with a $175,000 a year job working for Maricopa County. ... Government has sure been good to these people who keep telling us "government is the problem."

Keegan is, according to Talton, "fetching," and he wonders whether "the national media (will) look beyond the blond good looks and quick mind to see that Keegan represents everything that voters want to get away from in Republican education policy."

Keegan should be a Hagee-level disgrace for McCain.

But that will only happen if the media do their job.