To say that things are falling apart in any public education district would remove agency from those who could prevent it from happening -- or in the case of cities like New Orleans and Philadelphia, those who are actively making it happen. We took a look yesterday at Mitt Romney's renewed and sudden focus on education, and the effort to slice up the Philadelphia public schools yesterday, and one of the reporters covering that better than most is Daniel Denvir, reporter for Philadelphia City Paper and contributor to Salon, The Guardian and The Atlantic's Cities section. He'll be our guest for an extended conversation about American education.
One of this week's most interesting conversations was triggered by the column by MarketWatch's Rex Nutting which went viral, so to speak. We wrote it up here, and Melissa will chime in today as she welcomes Nutting to #nerdland. We'll also cover a number of other topics, including this week's historic elections in Egypt, and introduce you to a New Orleans-born "Foot Soldier," all with the following guests:
- Jelani Cobb, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and a member of the history department faculty at Rutgers University.
- Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent.
- Lila Leff, founder of UMOJA Student Development Corporation.
- Jonathan Alter, columnist for Bloomberg View and msnbc political analyst.
- Megan Behrent, English teacher at a New York city high school.
- Steve Kornacki, Salon columnist and msnbc contributor.
- Joy-Ann Reid, managing editor of theGrio and an msnbc contributor.
As always, folks -- be sure to interact with us during the show here in the comments of this post, on Facebook, and on Twitter, using the hashtag #nerdland. We look forward to having you join us at 10am ET on msnbc!