Really?

There’s a reason we’re publishing this on a weekend when not as many people are online … and that reason is that we actually like Inez Tenenbaum.

She’s swell (and being from Georgia, peachy), and we’d just hate it if too many people were to see us so adeptly mocking the ludicrous notion that she might ever become U.S. Secretary of Education.

You’ve heard the expression “from bad to worse?”

Well, that’s precisely what happened to South Carolina’s public schools during Tenenbaum’s eight-year tenure.

In fact, the two most notable accomplishments of Tenenbaum’s time in office were the effective politicization of our school children by the status quo and “accountability,” which has turned into nothing more than an annual reminder of how bad our public schools really are – and how much further they keep falling behind the rest of the nation.

Oh, Tenenbaum also created a skill that her successor has perfected – moving academic goalposts to fool people into thinking that you accomplished something when SAT scores and graduation rates were (and still are) telling a completely different story.

Amazingly, though, Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman has fallen for the ruse – and is actually touting Tenenbaum for the nation’s top education job.

In addition to regurgitating a litany of phantom accomplishments, Fineman tells us Tenenbaum possesses “gumption.”

Well, that’s half true.

Behind the “lil’ ol’ me” eyes and irresistible schoolteacher’s smile, Tenenbaum has never lacked gumption – at least when it came to fighting for the needs of bureaucrats and status quo politicians.

The problem came in getting anything accomplished on behalf of the school children that her “Ministry of Failure and Non-Competition” was supposed to be serving.

We will say this for Tenenbaum, though … unlike some Superintendents in this state, she at least never tried to pull the wool over people’s eyes to conceal her true institutional allegiance.

Rather than feed a reform-hungry public such meaningless concepts as “public school choice,” Inez at least advanced her monopolistic “one size fits all” philosophy out in the open where we could see it.