Ed Notes Extended

Monday, March 24, 2008

Whitney Tilson Chooses Ed Notes Editor to Manage Hedge Fund

Ed Notes News (ENN) reports that its editor, Norm Scott, has been appointed by hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson to reform the Nasdaq stock trading market in addition to managing Tilson's personal assets. Scott is deemed fit for the jobs after taking a one week course for teachers at the NY Stock Exchange.

"Nasdaq was around 5000 in March 2001 and now it is around 2200," said a spokesperson. "Clearly the financial pros are not doing the job. The culture of low expectations is the biggest reason for the failure of Nasdaq to bounce back.

"The core problems in American financial markets are: large companies with awful bureaucracies, skewed incentives, and powerful, entrenched interests defending them. We feel an optimist with one week's training can turn this culture around."

"It's all about the culture of low expectations and it's clear that the schools training financial managers have failed," said another unnamed Tilson spokesman. "We need to place a quality finance person in every position. The performance of the markets is indicative that MBA programs have failed miserably. Someone outside the field with little training is what is needed. A teacher with no expectations of ever earning a decent salary fits the bill perfectly."

As his first act, Scott had all the hedges trimmed around the nation's financial institutions.
Scott announced that every stockholder and employee at Bear Stearns will be able to bid for high priced consultant jobs.

Nasdaq will be branded a failure, closed down and broken into smaller entities. The public will be invited to apply for charters to open their own stock exchange. No experience in the financial field will be necessary.

Experts have speculated that one of the major causes of the current financial crisis has been due to Tilson and other financial managers' preoccupation with imposing a market-based model on the education system causing them to not pay attention to the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Whitney Tilson background:
Using his extensive knowledge of the public school system and how to fix what's broken - after all, he once did attend a school - Whitney Tilson jumps out of the financial field to comment on education on his so-called ed reform blog. He is also one of the leading advocates of Teach for America, the program that takes high end college grads and runs them through a few weeks of training and tosses them into classrooms in the inner city, mostly as missionaries to serve a 2 year term. Only 18% of TFA grads remain in teaching beyond their promised term of service. Tilson supports GARCOTT - Get A Real Career Other Than Teaching.

See NYC Educator today on Tilson and BloomKlein.
Tilson also has a blog supporting Obama's candidacy.

Scary, dude! Obama supporters, beware!

9 comments:

  1. "Between 1973 and 1975, Epstein taught calculus and physics at the Dalton School."

    We have very different definitions of "teacher." Try doing it in public schools the 'hood for 30 years and then show me people who make it big -- well, maybe Frank McCourt.

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  2. And Frank McCourt didn't exactly suffer either- yes, he started out in a difficult vocational school in Staten Island, but ended his career at Styvesant.

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  3. If you think Frank McCourt didn't exactly suffer, you haven't read Angela's Ashes.

    He's very sympathetic to teachers too. After Angela, don't forget to read Teacher Man.

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  4. I certainly wasn't pointing to Epstein as a role model. Google his name to see where he ended up. Was just trying to join in the fun, while making the point that people can actually be smart in two different fields.

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  5. NYC- I meant as far as teaching- so he deserved a break. As far as his life before he returned to NY- well, all I can say is, I have no clue how he survived.

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  6. I'm reading Teacher Man now and it is one of the most incisive books on teaching and teachers I've read. I've heard some people who knew him - students and teachers - describe him as either the best or the worst teacher they had. It proves the point when they try to label teachers as either "quality" or non-quality -- it all depends on teh eye of the beholder, in addition to the day of the week, time of day, time of year, the year, the kids, the parents, the moon, and as McCourt says - the chemistry between certain teachers and their classes and their individual children.

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  7. I've read it twice. I really enjoy his stories of creating learning opportunities via odd moments in the classroom. I can see how a quirky, imaginative soul like McCourt could inspire kids.

    The real charm to his writing is his voice--that's why the film version of Angela's Ashes was so awful; it simply told the story without his voice.

    Imagine kids lucky enough to literally hear a voice like that each and every day.

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  8. What's even better is listening to McCourt narrate his books. I have them downloaded onto my IPod, and it is absolutely wonderful hearing him. You'd probably enjoy the book even more that way.

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