David Protess, with former students Nicole Lapin and Evan Benn, at the Cook County criminal courthouse. (Photo from Chicago Magazine.)
RACE TO THE TOP (-ISH)
After months of squabbling and negotiation, the California State Assembly passed a series of reform measures that will allow California to get $4.3 billion in federal funds as part of the Obama administration’s Race To the Top initiative designed to foster changes at a state and local level in the nation’s education policy. The various teachers’ unions opposed some of the measures while others, like State Senator Gloria Romero, feel that the legislation doesn’t go nearly far enough. (I’m with Romero.)
Howard Blume and Patrick McGreevy at LA Times have the details as does the SF Chron and the Sac Bee.
Governor Schwarzenegger, who is on the side of the reformers, has indicated he will sign the legislation if the State Senate passes it relatively intact, which it is likely to do.
IS A CHICAGO PROSECUTOR PURSUING A VENDETTA AGAINST THE MEDILL INNOCENCE PROJECT STUDENTS?
According to a long and interesting article in Chicago Magazine, Cook County Prosecutor Anita Alverez has turned up the heat considerably on Northwestern University professor David Protess and his students from the Medill School of Journalism’s innocence Project. First she subpoenaed all their grades and then, writes reporter Byran Smith, her office has released to at least two reporters an internal memo about another Medill Innocence Project case that took place in 1996.
The memo recounts scurrilous and unsubstantiated claims about the conduct of Protess and students who were working on an investigation that resulted in freeing two men from death row and two others from life sentences. “What on earth does [an old] memo based on lies and designed to smear my students have to do with the truth of whether Anthony McKinney was wrongfully convicted?” asks Protess.
Now, a case that was about whether a convicted man is innocent has morphed into an increasingly personal brawl between two heavyweights unwilling to back down—with academics, prosecutors, freedom of the press advocates, and students hanging on the judge’s decision.
Anyway, read the article. Over the years, Protess and his various teams of Medill Innocence Project students have helped to overturn 11 wrongful convictions. The case now at hand is that of Anthony McKinney, who was convicted of a 1978 murder when he was a teenager. McKinney may—or may not—be innocent.
But to subpoena students’ grades and pass around scurrilous memos is not the way to find out.
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CALIFORNIA’S DIGITAL VOTING FUTURE?
FYI: Tonight, Wednesday night, March 6, 2010, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m., there is a Town Hall meeting to discuss the pros and cons of Californians being able to vote online. ( It’s an interesting topic that certainly deserves discussion.)
WHERE: Micheltorena Street School Auditorium, at 1511 Micheltorena Street. The Mapquest link can be found at http://www.lausd.net/Micheltorena_EL/contactus.htm. There is street parking in the general neighborhood;
For further information, please contact Paul Michael Neuman, pmneuman@yahoo.com, 323-662-3123.