The Right Wing smear machine has been in overdrive attacking Kevin Jennings, who heads the Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.  But the education community is having none of it.

The National Association of School Psychologists calls Jennings "A Champion in the Department of Education."

The Learning First Alliance says "Kevin Jennings is the right person to lead the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools."

The National Education association says Jennings is "highly qualified" and that his "proven track record of success speaks for itself."

Gerald Tirozzi of the National Association of Secondary School Principles appeared on CNN last night to praise Jennings as "a powerful voice to continualy help us not to back away from doing the right things for kids in our schools."

And, in case you were wondering, People For says "Kevin Jennings Will Keep Schools Safe for All."  Indeed.

 UPDATE: There's more!

The Council for Exceptional Children says "Mr. Jennings has dedicated his career to ensuring that our schools remain supportive, safe and positive for all students."

The Social Workers Association of America says Jennings "is devoted to improving the school climate and making schools safe and nurturing environments for learning and growth."

The National Association of Secondary School Principals calls Jennings "a great educator who cares deeply about every student."

From the AFL-CIO's blog:

United Farmworkers founder César Chávez is an unfitting role model for students, and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is not an appropriate historical figure. So say “expert reviewers” in their report to the Texas State Board of Education, which recommends removing the two U.S. leaders from the social studies curriculum taught to its 4.7 million public school students.

The ranting of these extremists has the potential to turn into mass censorship—Texas is such a mega-purchaser of textbooks that the state’s required curricula drives the content of textbooks produced nationwide.

Read the whole post here >

Given all the recent talk from the Right about judicial activism, it was pretty amazing to see Justice Alito's contortions in Thursday's decision in Horne v. Flores that gave the Arizona School Superintendent one more shot at justifying what seems to be a flawed approach to helping its English language learners overcome language obstacles.  The crux of the case, as Justice Breyer noted in his dissent, was that the graduation rate and test scores of English language learners in the Nogales Unified School District were significantly below that of the rest of the student body and the record demonstrated that this was because adequate resources were not being made available to address these students' needs.

Justice Alito thought the lower court was being too protective of the students and that the case should be sent back for a re-do. He was not able to reach this result by concluding that compliance with the more lenient No Child Left Behind Act satisfied the higher standards of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 – because a fair reading of the statutes would not permit such a conclusion. He resorted, therefore, to an in-depth, soup to nuts, re-examination of the detailed lower court findings, substituting his judgment for that of the courts below, without the deference traditionally accorded lower courts in this situation.  He also, as the dissent pointed out, reached out to consider claims not even raised or considered below.  Indeed, one of those claims Justice Breyer characterizes as "[springing] full-grown from the Court's own brow, like Athena from the brow of Zeus."  The result of all this, in Justice Breyer's view:  it will now be far more difficult for federal courts to enforce standards designed to support non-English speaking school children.

This result is troubling. And how the Court got there is equally troubling. Indeed, it’s the same kind of "unabashed display of judicial lawmaking" we saw in last week's decision in Gross v. FBL Financial Services.