It’s no great secret that there is not a lot of love and warm feelings between some top Bush Administration folks and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. The disagreements go deeper than just sensible shoes versus Birkenstocks. Fordham head Chester Finn had the temerity to criticize them in the early days, and while this Administration may countenance a lot of things public dissent doesn’t seem to be one of them.
But here’s a stunner, former Secretary of Education Rod Paige is joining the Fordham Foundation board of trustees. This won’t help the frosty relations because Earth Mother Spellings is on record as being less than enamored of Paige’s tenure at ED and the Austin – Houston riff is at full throttle these days. The Spellings op-ed drew blood.
Will Fordham become another edugovernment in exile with Austin ascendant? You decide, Mike Petrilli, now deputy at the Office of Innovation at ED is heading to Fordham as well.