Leslie Linthicum’s Silly Scribbles

I haven’t written about Hanna Skandera and her consultants because I think the issue is so ridiculously-fabricated by the teachers’ unions as to be not worth mentioning. After all, the unions will criticize reformers like Skandera for the act of breathing, much less actually reforming our failing schools.

Then I saw the front page of today’s Albuquerque Journal with Linthicum’s silly column saying that “she’d like Skandera’s deal” of having consultants paid a total of $152,000 to write her columns. Perhaps if Linthicum had consultants, they would have told her not to write the column in the first place. Or they might have told her that dealing with federal regulations, an entrenched bureaucracy, and teachers unions’ to name just a few obstacles, is a bit different than writing a newspaper column….

Thankfully, Michael DeWitte and Larry Langley of the New Mexico Business Roundtable have a much more common sense take on the consultant non-issue on the editorial pages of this morning’s paper.

I simply don’t understand how — unless you are in a teachers union — you can criticize Skandera. She’s like a football coach who has taken over a failed football team like the Carolina Panthers or Denver Broncos. She hasn’t even had the chance to make a draft pick yet. And, unlike a football coach, she doesn’t actually have the ability to control her “team” which is really led by the unions. How can you criticize her at this point?