SOUTH BRONX SCHOOL: If The Corleone Family Were Involved In Education Deform...

Monday, August 19, 2013

If The Corleone Family Were Involved In Education Deform...

So here I am on Saturday on I-81 driving north just outside of Binghamton on my way to Skaneateles. My wife is on her iPhone doing whatever as is my son. I am left alone to listen to flip between the Sirius channels.

One can do a lot of pondering in such a situation. I did. I pondered, or was it wondered, or was it
daydreaming, that the Godfather movie (or even organized crime) is a lot like what we are seeing now in education amongst the deformers. Think about it, we're fighting against a crime family.

So what if the Godfather movie and the Corleone's were involved in education reform. Let's take a look.

Be sure to read the last fantasy or parody all the way at the bottom.

Michael: My credit good enough to buy you out?
Moe Greene: Buy me out?  [Fredo laughs nervously] 
Michael: The school, the playground. The Corleone Family wants to buy you out. 
Moe Greene: The Corleone Family wants to buy me out? No, I buy you out, you don't buy me out.  Michael: Your school loses money, maybe we can do better. 
Moe Greene: You think I'm skimmin off the top, Mike? 
Michael: [Michael shakes his head] You're unlucky. 
Moe Greene: You goddamn guineas you really make me laugh. I do you a favor and take Freddie in when you're having a bad time, and now you're gonna try and push me out! 
Michael: You took Freddie in because the Corleone Family bankrolled your charter school, and the Molinari Family on the Coast guaranteed his teaching position. Now we're talking business, let's talk business. 
Moe Greene: Yeah, let's talk business, Mike. First of all, you're all done. The Corleone Family don't even have that kind of muscle anymore. The Godfather's sick, right? You're getting chased out of New York by Barzini Charter School and the other Families charters. What do you think is going on here? You think you can come to my charter school and take over? I talked to Barzini - I can make a deal with him, and still keep my charter school! 
Michael: Is that why you slapped my brother around in public? 
Fredo: Aw, now that, that was nothin', Mike. Moe didn't mean nothin' by that. Yeah, sure he flies off the handle every once in a while, but me and him, we're good friends, right Moe? 
Moe Greene: I got a business to run. I gotta kick asses sometimes to make it run right. We had a little argument, Freddy and me, so I had to straighten him out. 
Michael: You straightened my brother out?  Moe Greene: He was banging erasers against the board two at a time! Students couldn't get any work at the table! What's the matter with you? 
Michael: I leave for New York tomorrow, think about a price. 
Moe Greene: Sonofabitch! Do you know who I am? I'm Moe Greene! I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders! 
Fredo: Wait a minute, Moe, Moe, I got an idea. Tom, you're the Consiglieri and you can talk to the Don, you can explain... 
Tom Hagen: Now hold it right there. The Don is semi-retired and Mike is in charge of the Family business now. If you have anything to say, say it to Michael. 
Fredo: [Moe Greene leaves] Mike! You do not come to Las Vegas and talk to a man like Moe Greene like that! 
Michael: Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever.


Michael: Well, when Johnny was first starting out as a teacher, he was signed to a personal services contract with this big high school. And as his career got better and better, he wanted to get out of it. But the principal wouldn't let him. Now, Johnny is my father's godson. So my father went to see this bandleader and offered him $10,000 to let Johnny go, but the principal said no. So the next day, my father went back, only this time with Luca Brasi. Within an hour, he had a signed release for a certified check of $1000.
Kay Adams: How did he do that?
Michael: My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Kay Adams: What was that?
Michael: Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.
Kay Adams: ...
Michael: ...That's a true story.
Michael: That's my family Kay, that's not me.

Tom Hagen: Sollozo is known as the Turk. He's supposed to be very good with a number 2 pencil . But only in matters of business, or of some sort of reasonable complaint. His business is testing. He has the field testing in Turkey, where they create the tests. In Sicily he has the plant to print the tets. He needs cash and he needs protection from the communities for which he gives a piece of the action, I couldn't find out how much. The Tattaglia Family is behind him here in New York so they have to be in it for something.
Don Corleone: What about his prison record?
Tom Hagen: Two terms, one in Italy, and one here. He's known as a top testing man.
Don Corleone: Santino, what do you think?
Sonny: There's a lot of money in that testing.
Don Corleone: Tom?
Tom Hagen: Well, I say yes. There is more money potential in testing than anything else we're looking at now. If we don't get into it, somebody else will, maybe one of the Five Families, maybe all of them. And with the money they earn they'll be able to buy more deformers and political power. Then they come after us. Right now we have the unions under control and we have the charters and those are the best things to have. But testing is a thing of the future. If we don't get a piece of that action we risk everything we have. Not now, but ten years from now.
Sonny: Well, what's your answer gonna be, Pop?

Don Zaluchi really hits the nail on the head in what the deformers, the politicians, the principals without souls, the TFA's, the TC's really think and believe. 

Don Zaluchi could be anybody we know. Uncle Mike, Sock Puppet Walcott, Governor Andy, Lucy Calkins, a pretentious principal, Whitney Tilson, Evan Stone. The list can go on and on...

Don Zaluchi: I also don't believe in Ed Reform. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, "I have Ed Reform; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment, we can make fifty thousand distributing their programs." So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable.
[slams his hand on the table and shouts]
Don Zaluchi: I don't want it near charter schools! I don't want it sold to affluent communities! That's an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.

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