Another Monday, another impressive spread on the Boston Globe op-ed page devoted to the thoughts of retired Boston high school teacher Junia Yearwood.

More accurately, we should say another spread devoted to thoughts about the thoughts offered by Yearwood, because the space taken up by her latest guest column pales next to the flood of letters-to-the-editor printed today about her column from last week.

And so it seems to go with the retired English High School teacher, whose musings appear to be opening the floodgates of letter writing to the paper. Yearwood has joined a broad roster of outside voices Globe editorial page editor Peter Canellos has brought in to liven up the paper’s opinion pages. In Yearwood, he has certainly done that. But one wonders whether Yearwood’s allies in the education status quo (sometimes referred to impolitically as “the blob”) are cheering or cringing at the prominent platform she’s been given.

That’s because her offerings often seem to do the work of those she disagrees with. Last week, she railed against charter schools.  With more than a little piety, Yearwood said she never considered abandoning her “calling” to serve needy students by taking a job in the “greener pastures” of the charter world.  “Citadels of academic rigor,” she called charter schools, as if this were somehow a pejorative sneer.  In Yearwood’s apparent preference for mediocrity for all, low-income families in Boston with no access to the academic rigor of top suburban districts should presumably be put on a forced march to dysfunctional district schools like English High.

She tells the story of a student who landed at English after being asked to leave a local charter school because of behavior issues and then struggled academically when he came under the sway of the school’s permissive culture. “He stared in wonder at those who wore hats in class, talked incessantly to classmates or to persons on the other end of their cell phones, and at those who honed their skills of disrespecting the classroom teacher,” she wrote. “He referred to this transition as life-changing.”  Though this was not likely her intent, a better indictment of large urban high schools could not have been drawn up.  Were the adults at English High utterly powerless to do anything about such anarchic behavior?  If so, who would blame a family for doing everything it can to have their child schooled elsewhere? (See here, here, here, and here for the reader responses printed today.)

In today’s offering, Yearwood offers a blow-by-blow account of the broken teacher evaluation system in public schools. It’s a huge problem that has received considerable attention in recent years.  But as Yearwood decries her experience with perfunctory “walk-by” evaluations, one wonders whether she thinks large district systems like Boston could learn something from high-performing charter schools that have developed rigorous and meaningful evaluation processes that demand the most of their teachers – and accept nothing less.  

State politics

Gov. Deval Patrick is evidently worried about potential negative fallout from the search for a new UMass president should trustees tap the uber-wired chancellor of the system’s Lowell campus, Marty Meehan.  The Globe reports that two trustees will meet with Patrick today – presumably to assure him all will be fine once their nationwide search taps the ex-Lowell congressman.

Joe Battenfeld urges Patrick to keep his inaugural tux in the closet, and to please, please, refrain from calling January’s celebration a ball.

The sheriff round-up

An about-face that seems to be about saving face for Middlesex County Sheriff Jim DiPaolo, who was thisclose to becoming Globe reporter Sean Murphy’s new poster boy for public-sector pension abuse.  Or perhaps DiPaola’s enlightenment was triggered by this seven-month long investigation by FOX-25 of the High Sheriff of Middlesex. The FOX report includes allegations of DiPaolo pocketing campaign cash contributions, using county employees and cars as a livery service after drinking too much and padding the payroll with one-time House colleagues.

Keller@Large says Gov. Deval Patrick’s comments minimizing rampant examples of corruption show he is looking at state government with rose-colored glasses – or maybe blinders.

The New England Center for Investigative Journalism reports state legislators are shirking their duty and potentially wasting millions of dollars by not launching a mandated review of the 14 sheriffs’ offices.

Auditor-elect Suzanne Bump should take a look at the Berkshire County Sheriff’s Office, says a Berkshire Eagle editorial.

National politics

Paul Krugman unloads on Congressional Republicans: “The fact is that one of our two great political parties has made it clear that it has no interest in making America governable, unless it’s doing the governing. And that party now controls one house of Congress, which means that the country will not, in fact, be governable without that party’s cooperation — cooperation that won’t be forthcoming.”

The National Journal reports that Harry Reid’s top candidate to run the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is a senator who has already turned down the job offer, but not as forcefully as everybody else.

Haley Barbour is a small-government Republican governor who has found that making government small in isn’t all that easy.

New York profiles New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is the GOP’s new darling because he does all sorts of crazy tough-talking things – like railroading his budget through a Democratic-controlled legislature by threatening to go eat pizza, drink beer and watch the Mets while the state government shut down.

Business and economy

Joan Vennochi marveled yesterday (not in a positive way) at GE’s chutzpah to seek a tax break for limiting the number of workers it will lay off.

Local government

Firefighters in Haverhill who were suspended without pay for abusing sick time are blocked in their initial attempt to recover their lost pay, the Eagle-Tribune reports.

The town manager in Nantucket, according to the Inquirer & Mirror, is proposing a sweeping reorganization of government in a bid to save $700,000.

A MetroWestDaily News editorial gives a thumbs up to Randolph’s recent decision to tie municipal employees’ raises to the health of its property tax, state aid, and local receipts.

Health matters

A Berkshire Eagle editorial calls for western Massachusetts communities to move municipal employees’ health care plans to the Group Insurance Commission after a speech in Lenox by Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation president Michael Widmer.

Patriot Ledger business editor Jon Chesto takes on the quandary of the medical device excise tax due to take effect in 2013. On the one hand, the levy is expected to bring in about $20 billion over 10 years to help pay for the federal health care mandate. On the other, Massachusetts manufacturers will likely feel the impact more than those in nearly any other state.

Ledger cartoonist O’Mahoney gives his take on those caffeinated alcoholic beverages adults probably hadn’t thought of.

Public records

The Eagle-Tribune, citing a City Council case in Methuen, says the open meeting law is toothless.

Brockton city officials have refused a public records request from The Enterprise for the telephone numbers of city-issued cell phones. The city solicitor claims the numbers are protected under the law’s privacy exemption even though they are bought and paid for with public dollars.

Science and technology  

NPR’s Science Friday examines whether airport scanners are safe.

Probation (con’t)

The Eagle-Tribune says another round of token reforms isn’t going to cut it.

The Lowell Sun offers guidance on how to clean out the cesspool.

Hub Blog argues the state is ripe for a federal lawsuit by the hundreds of people shut out of probation jobs, using the 1990 Supreme Court Rutan decision as the foundation for the potential class action.

Transportation

Federal officials praise New England’s regional aviation planning, but Worcester Airport still has a long way to go before it can serve as a regional hub, reports Associated Press via MetroWest Daily News.

Energy and the Environment

Donations to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, Cape Wind’s leading opponent, declined over the past year, a Cape Cod Times report found.

Media matters

We finally saw the Dan Wasserman cartoon taking a shot at Bank of America that got held last Sunday – the same day the Globe was distributing a glossy insert on the Museum of Fine Art’s new Art of the Americas Wing.  Click here to see what Globe publisher Chris Mayer didn’t want you to see last Sunday. Wasserman imagines all the paintings in the new wing – whose grand opening was officially sponsored by BoA – depicting houses the banking behemoth has foreclosed on. 

Religion

George Weigel, who wrote a foreword for Pope Benedict XVI’s new book, says in the National Review Online that the prelate’s statements on condom use is not a shift in Catholic teaching and the media, searching for “Salvation by Latex,” has it all wrong.