FIXING AMERICA'S SCHOOLS - BUT PROBABLY NOT THE OBAMA WAY

President Obama's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited Denver earlier this week to tour a couple of the city's more successful alternative public schools and deliver a couple of policy speeches on how he and the administration want to reform education policy.

Duncan has some good ideas--empowering teachers more, encouraging more innovation and promoting pay-for-performance teacher contracts to name a few. But he is also a proponent of one of the more radical plans I've heard for public schools.

"You're competing for jobs with kids from India and China," he told a group of students at Bruce Randolph School. "I think schools should be open six, seven days a week, 11 or 12 months a year."

WHAT?!? Is more school really the answer if we can't firmly nail down exactly what the curriculum for our students should be? And what do India and China have to do with more time in the classroom? In neither country do students attend class 11-12 months a year, six to seven days a week. While you'll get little argument from me that American students, teachers, parents and administrators all need to work harder to improve the education of our children, I don't think chaining kids to desks in classrooms up to 300 days a year will produce the desired result. Does this bother you as much as it bothers me or am I just overreacting?

Sources for this post include 9News.com

Reg's Cheap Wine of the Week

This week, a delightful dessert wine from--surprise, surprise!--Colorado's Western Slope. (This means if you're reading this on the East or West coasts, this wine may not be available. Sorry.)

The vineyard is Stoney Mesa in Cedaredge, Colorado on the Western Slope. They make a Riesling which is fruity, full bodied, sweet and delicious. For $8.99 a bottle, you could do a lot worse! If you have this wine in your area, definitely give it a try.

Have You Gone "In Treatment"?

We checked out the first five segments from Season 2 of HBO's IN TREATMENT this week and it is setting up to be an even better season than the first one. In addition to regulars Gabriel Byrne and Dianne Weist, this year's guest stars include John Mahoney as a beleaguered CEO, Hope Davis as a high-priced attorney with past connections to Byrne's therapist character and Alison Pill as a college student suffering from lymphoma. If you can, check it out. The quality of the acting and writing is as good as anything on TV today.

Thanks for the vine...until I swing again.

Peace...