Over the years, I've kinda gotten to know two people who later became famous in the Toy Department of Life. One, as those of you visit my college football blog know, is my former law-school classmate Rick Neuheisel. Although we were mainly casual acquaintances, and didn't hang out together outside the Gould Law Center, my memories are uniformly positive. He was (and for all I know, still is) a funny, down-to-earth guy, as far away from being the stereotypical jock as a human can be. I hope he soaks U-Dub for whatever he can take.

The other athlete I knew, sort of, was Kevin Johnson. He either lived in, or palled around with/slept with someone who lived in, the same dorm unit as I, so I'd see him quite a bit. Back then, he was a talented freshman, but far from being a star; his big claim to fame was hitting a buzzer-beating jump shot to send our game with UCLA into overtime (CAL lost anyway). The closest I ever came to a substantive encounter with KJ came when I sat next to him at Kip's, one of the earliest sports bars I remember, watching an SC-UCLA basketball game one Friday night in 1985. Over the years, KJ has become a point of pride for UC graduates, a star athlete and mensch who was a legitimate student, who could quote Camus and go from baseline to baseline in four seconds, in contrast to the Bozeman Era mercenaries (Kidd, Murray, Abdul-Rahim) who had almost nothing to do with the academic side of the university.

This morning's LA Times has an interesting piece about KJ's attempt to transform his high school alma mater into a charter school run by something called the "St. HOPE Corp.". The article only hints at this, but his struggle to get this project off the ground represents everything that is wrong with the educational debate in this country.

The school, Sacramento High, has had declining test scores for years, due largely to what one audit described as a climate of low funding and administrative apathy. However, the honors section of the school has a good track record getting its students into college, and the school itself has a number of fine, experienced teachers. Wanting to incorporate that quality into the rest of the school, a number of parents led a petition drive to begin a charter school, and KJ's group won a narrow vote by the Board of Education over a proposal by the teacher's union (btw, this being California, the school board members who backed KJ are now the subjects of a recall drive).

What KJ's solution for this remains unclear. He proposes to divide the school into six charter schools, which would allow it to remain independent of administrative regulations binding to other schools. How this would be different from the way the school was run last year, or how it would be run by a more standard charter school proposal, is hard to say, except when the only idea that is being spit out is to reduce the due process rights of teachers, you know you're not dealing with someone with creative educational policies. One teacher was at first enthusiastic about the program, only to have a change-of-heart after one meeting ended with the good folks at St. HOPE leading a prayer hymn. Had KJ not had an outstanding career as a point guard, it is hard to see this project being taken seriously.

Johnson, who has no background in education, obviously has his heart in the right place, and his celebrity has attracted some deep pockets from the private sphere, including Bill Gates and the Walton Foundation, to help fund some of the more grandiose projects. It looks like he will have a shot at getting this project off the ground when schools open next week. But it is hard to see how this is any different from the vanity projects other athletes sponsor: Magic Johnson has his own theatres, TGIFridays, and 24 Hour gyms, all of which pay tribute to the glorious career of Magic; KJ has his own Starbucks and his charter school. In the long run, schools will only improve with a significant public investment, not just a hope and a prayer that philanthropy tied to a famous name will save the day.