On Thursday, the hosts of CBS This Morning interrogated former NBC and CNN journalist Campbell Brown and prominent liberal attorney David Boies over their effort to reform the public education system by eliminating a union sacred cow, teacher tenure. Co-host Norah O'Donnell began the segment by proclaiming: "This could be a watershed moment for America's public schools or a misguided effort to punish teachers for problems far beyond the classroom." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Brown explained that tenure "makes it almost impossible to remove a grossly ineffective or incompetent teacher or in some cases even an abusive teacher." In response, O'Donnell toed the union line: "But you both should answer this, what your critics charged. You've focused a lot of time and money and one of the best lawyers in the country on an issue like tenure, when many people say that budget cuts to schools and inadequate funding is really the reason why there's inequality."

Stephen Colbert began the July 29 edition of The Colbert Report by doing his best to perpetuate liberal’s favorite myth that, in Obama’s words, women make “77 cents for every dollar a man earns.” Using his faux conservative persona, the comedian evinced over-the-top sexism to blast President Obama comments on putting historical female figures on U.S. currency, stating that he needs to “think of the economic consequences here. If we put a woman on the $1 bill it will be worth only 77 cents.”

Even left-wing news sites like Slate and The Daily Beast have recognized that this statistic is misleading, and the calculation does not take into account “differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked per week.” While the Comedy Central host was able to play up his persona in order to blast conservatives for sexism, he was unable to stay in character for an interview with the Partnership of Educational Justice founder Campbell Brown. The former CNN host came onto the show to promote the organization’s efforts to support a lawsuit filed by seven New York parents “challenging teacher tenure in the public school.” [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]

Michelle Obama's name must really be mud in the school nutrition community these days.

I had to do a double-take when I read today's coverage of the School Nutrition Association's Annual Conference in Boston by Philip Marcelo at the Associated Press today. What Marcelo hid from the nation is that the SNA didn't want Michelle Obama or anyone else from the White House anywhere near their conference.

On Tuesday, the Brookings Institution, with a David Leonhardt column at the New York Times serving as its de facto press release, published a study (full PDF here) entitled, "Is a Student Loan Crisis on the Horizon?" Unsurprisingly, their finding, in one word, was "No." Their more qualifed finding: "[I]n reality, the impact of student loans may not be as dire as many commentators fear." Their underlying "logic": "typical borrowers are no worse off now than they were a generation ago."

It's bad enough that much of the data presented by Beth Akers and Matthew M. Chingos, the study's authors, directly contradicts the sunshine they're trying blow up our keisters. What's even worse is that you don't even need to dig into the detail once you learn which year's data they used — 2010. For heaven's sake, guys, total student loan debt has grown by between 50 percent and 60 percent since then.

The "Memo from Birmingham" in Monday's New York Times, "Reading, Writing and Allegations," by reporter Katrin Bennhold, partially whitewashed the problem of Islamic separatism and possible tolerance for extremism at a high school in Birmingham, England.

Bennhold, playing lightly over allegations against Park View School, strove to make a recent UK government investigation sound ludicrous and prejudiced.