As Hogan and his GOP minions jealously guard the budget against school improvement plans, the state Dems have urged him to wise up about the state's priorities and an advocacy coalition has scheduled 23 town-hall type information events around the state in the next several months.

It’s not out of character for a top member of the Hogan cartel (Budget Secretary David R. Brinkley) to snipe that the goal of school reform should “make wanting to be in the classroom something that people really want to do and don’t have to be bribed to do it.”

But it signals that the neolib establishment, including the tell-both-sides media, are already taking aim at the Kirwan Commission’s serious attempt to compensate teachers according to their value and provide a working classroom environment that helps kids succeed and keeps good teachers in the game longer than the three-year average. Progressives will have to fight from day one to reclaim our schools from the budget hawks.