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Saturday, June 1, 2013

How About a Peoples' Policy Conference? - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher

How About a Peoples' Policy Conference? - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:

How About a Peoples' Policy Conference?

So the future-policy-for-Michigan confab at Mackinac Island has wound down. The media's preferred word to describe the 2013 Mackinac Policy Conference seems to be "confab," so I'm going to go with that. Consider this: "confab" is short for "confabulation" which has two basic meanings: "an informal, private conversation" and"filling in mental gaps with fabrications one believes are facts."
So--confab is exactly right.
The usual confabulatory suspects were present and speaking, around this year's theme: How can we fix our utterly failed public education system which is not producing revenue for entrepreneurs?* The Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce chose K-12 Inc. Jeb for their keynote. Naturally, Michelle Rhee made an appearance. And the crowd went wild.
The Detroit Chamber has been sponsoring the conference for thirty-plus years, whisking politicians, journalists and gadflies on both sides of the aisle to a midweek, perk-fueled talk-fest that's supposed to generate new solutions for life's persistent questions--or at least, big issues in Michigan. Evidently, this requires lots of open