In the school reform arena these days, you have two competing views of what the problem is in education, and what the solution might be. On one side, you have Bill Gates and Mr. Broad, who believe that by collecting better data and using it to aid administrators to inform better teaching methods, you can turn failing schools around with out putting any more money in them. On the other hand, you have people like Larry Cuban, (seeTinkering towards Utopia) who believe that the frantic rate at which Mr. Gates and Mr. Broad and their ilk push one poorly thought out reform effort after another, along with a lack of will to fully fund all children's education at the same level, is as much a problem as the issues these "reformers" purport to fix. Another way to look at this: on one side,you have the teachers that are actually in the trenches. On the other side, you have business people and lawyers, who for the most part have no real understanding of education. only ideology. Ms. Ali is a lawyer, not a teacher. Mr. Duncan had no teaching experience when he took over at Chicago. To make an poor analogy; this is like peopling the FDA not with Doctors, but Drug salesmen.