Fox guarding the henhouse?

                                                                                                                                              Vol. XXII, No. 2, February 2009

If you're an educator and Phi Delta Kappa doesn't like you, there's a good chance you're doing something right.

Take Lisa Graham Keegan, Arizona's state superintendent of public instruction. Keegan was recently labeled a "rotten apple" in Phi Delta Kappan, the journal of the pro-public education organization. Keegan was also "honored" with a "Benedict Arnold Award."

What did Keegan do to deserve such praise? She pushed for school vouchers during her tenure as a state legislator and , when that failed, she successfully engineered passage of the nation's broadest charter school law.

But perhaps Keegan's greatest transgression was her shift from legislator to state superintendent, a move that Phi Delta Kappan lamented: "Talk about foxes guarding hen houses!!"

Keegan, however, seems to relish her reputation. At a Washington, D.C., conference on privatization, Keegan recounted her encounter with a woman who complained, "You're killing public education as we know it."

Keegan's reply? "I told her, 'Every night I pray that it is so.' "

[Focus on the Family Citizen Magazine, Vol. 13, No. 12, December 1999, page 10. http://www.family.org http://www.citizenlink.org]