Update: OK, not sexy, but Justin Timberlake as a soup can is funny. 

In reading Alexander Russo's interview with Paul Tough of the New York Times, I was struck by how Tough became interested in KIPP schools. In conducting research for his book on the Harlem Children's Zone, he says:

One of the projects the Harlem Children’s Zone runs is a charter school called the Promise Academy, which is now in its third academic year. At the beginning of its first year, the teachers and administrators were surprised and a little overwhelmed by how far behind their middle-school students were when they arrived in sixth grade – most were reading at a fourth-grade level, and some were reading at a second-grade level. On the first day of school, Geoffrey Canada promised them and their parents that they would all get to college. This seemed to me to be an extremely difficult promise to keep, and perhaps an impossible one.

I started looking around for research relating to what the teachers and administrators were up against, and I also went looking for schools that were accomplishing, or coming close to accomplishing, what Canada was promising to do. For a long time I didn’t think anyone was achieving it. The first school that started to convince me otherwise was Amistad Academy, in New Haven. From there I got to KIPP and the Uncommon Schools and the charter debate and the Education Trust debate and Richard Rothstein and Ronald Ferguson and the Thernstroms, all of which was really just to help me figure out an answer to the question of how Geoff Canada might be able to keep his promise. I still don’t know the answer. But the book isn’t due till the end.

It's amazing how reporters sort of stumble upon a school that seems to be doing something right (or different), and then it frames their whole view of public education.  The AFT could point reporters to examples of "regular," high-poverty, urban public schools that are doing amazing things in school districts across the country, but it seems that they don't regard that sort of story as "sexy" enough.  Perhaps we should enlist the help of Justin Timberlake in "bringing sexy back" to press coverage of public schools.

(If you are like me and had actually never heard Sexy Back--I listen to XM Radio, and they don't play Justin Timberlake on The Loft, Hear Music or The Joint--click here for the video and here for the lyrics.)