I have often been struck by the uneven playing field that policymakers and legislators establish for charter schools and public schools. The public schools are increasingly strangled by regulations and by high-stakes testing and punitive evaluations, at the same time that the charter schools are exempt from most of the strangulation. I have heard many times from principals who say that they want to turn their public school into a charter so they can escape the tentacles of regulation that are wrapped tight around their school. And I have wondered whether the purpose of “reform” was to make public schools fail while the deregulated charter schools increase and thrive.
Here is another take on the current corporate reform movement, inspired by an earlier post about stagnant ACT scores:
The more conversations I have about the entire “reform” movement, the more convinced I am that it’s really about disbanding teacher unions so that the majority of education programs will eventually be part of a private industry thus paving the way for the privatizing of all public systems.
The evidence just keeps mounting to show that standardized testing is a flawed way to judge the efficacy of the public schools, and the mere fact that charters and private/parochial schools do not have the same “rigorous” standards as public schools points to the idea that “standards” are not really important at all to the reformers who push for these kinds of alternate schools.
Utilizing standardized tests that the reformers know are flawed is a tactic to devalue the people who teach in public schools so that they can be fired and a private interest can take over.
It’s as if these policy-makers have found a way to rig the game: Create new rules that make for impossible goals and then watch a good system that serves the public fail under these new rules. They have set up the game so that the players will fail no matter what–IF you believe the rules are sound.
It’s pretty evident that the main goal is to disband two of the largest public unions in the country using children as pawns. Once the AFT and the NEA are toppled, so they must think, the rest will follow, and the privatization of public systems in America will ensue.
I would not put it past our policy-makers to be trying to sell the public a bill of goods by pretending they care about the children at all, when in reality, they care about getting rid of union teachers and privatizing education so their buddies can “invest” and continually get rich.
This isn’t about parent choice (unless legal segregation is what they’re after), this isn’t about success, and this isn’t about getting rid of “bad” teachers. It’s about getting rid of unions and privatizing. To me, the evidence points to these intentions no matter how anyone else wants to spin it.
There are plenty of strangleholds on charters as well – so many that they make no sense to open at all!! It seems the only purpose they serve is that of dismantling the ever-decreasing power of unions. I am a private school teacher, without tenure in an area where public school teachers are paid quite well, and I’m appalled by the systematic dismantling of the unions for public school teachers.
Do you have any evidence to support your latest sweeping generalization that “charter schools are exempt from most of the strangulation”? Where is this true? As someone who actually RAN a charter school, I can guarantee you that this is patently false in California, which I believe is still home to more charter schools than any other state. I lived under the threat and tyranny of test-score based evaluation every single day. Low test scores mean potential – and sometimes AUTOMATIC – closure for charter schools on a yearly basis. Meanwhile, the traditional public school that I was at before the charter had failed to meet testing goals for nearly a decade and not only remained open, but actually had very little outside intervention despite the fact that it had been under “sanction” since the very inception of the state monitoring system. Mine is not an argument that the system for evaluating schools is fair, just, or effective – it is to point out the fact that it affects charter schools more so than traditional public schools, not less. Passion is great, but facts and evidence are nice too.
Regulations for charter schools vary from state to state. In Louisiana, for example, teachers in charter schools do not need to be certified. In some states, charters are exempt from the requirement to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students. In New York and elsewhere, charters design their admission process, and they write their own discipline rules. They can suspend or expel students for infractions that would not be considered infractions in public schools. The superintendent in Cleveland has publicly complained about the large number of charter students who are pushed out every year (usually after enrollment count and distribution of state funding) and sent back to the public schools without funding.
By definition, charters are “deregulated.” If they were not deregulated, they would be no different from public schools.
Thank you for the anecdotal evidence. But nothing for California, obviously, because the “deregulation” is minimal. And certainly nothing about the disparity in funding in California where charters have been proven by the non-partisan LAO to be significantly underfunded. And none of your examples have to do with testing, which I find particularly interesting since that is the single largest strangehold we are discussing (and agree on).
In response to the other examples:
1. Louisiana- I’m a little confused here. From what I know, you are against non-certified teachers. So how could this be an advantage for charters if those teachers and those programs are so bad?
2. Admission, for any school receiving federal funding, can not include preferences or requirements. In California that is also true for schools receiving state funding, so I’d be surprised if it isn’t true in most states. Like most anti-charter arguments, “self selection” is exagerrated and mischaracterized.
3. Discipline- Again, we have an entire system that is broken, and there is no grounds or reason to lay that blame at the feet of charter schools. Do some charters use discipline measures aggresively? I’m sure that they do, even though a school superintendent is hardly an unbiased source of information – and I can find plenty of equal examples among traditional public schools. I had students attempting to enroll at the charter because they said they were called out of class and “dropped” by school administration at their previous school. Public education systems all across this country are failing kids and families when it comes to discipline, and it has little or nothing to do with deregulation.
I’ve often thought this mess boils down to busting the unions. Once that’s done, it’s smooth sailing for the “reformers.”
From where I stand, the union appears to be silent. What gives? I thumbed through a recent national magazine from the NEA. Nothing on what’s currently transpiring. Our local representation is always “looking into that,” yet provides no answers when asked about the union’s stance on privatization. I thought the front page of the NEA website would be bursting with anti-privatization articles. Instead I found all kinds of back-to-school tips for teachers.
Anyone here a union rep? In the know? What is going on?
Right now charters have much higher teacher and principal attrition rates; because of the lousy working conditions and lack of job protections. One possible reason that the corp reformers are on the attack against teachers is so that these conditions will be replicated in our public schools.
I am a pro union person and a lifelong Democrat but I must say that I am disappointed with the unquestioning and uncritical support for Obama, as regards education and educational policies by the NEA and NJEA. This is from the NJEA website: “Now more than ever, we need to elect a President who shares our vision for a stronger America. President Barack Obama has earned the NEA’s recommendation because of his unwavering support for education and students and his commitment to a vibrant middle class. Do your part and pledge to be an educator for Obama today!” I understand that the GOP is a party that has gone insane, as Paul Krugman points out, but the current crop of Democrats, including Obama, have bought into the so called reform movement, they just pay lip service to unions while promoting charter schools, school vouchers, standardized testing, firing teachers, closing down schools and privatizing our schools. The NJEA and the NEA could at least be a little critical of Obama’s terrible education policies. In some ways, RTTT is NCLB on steroids, it’s worse than NCLB. I would never vote GOP but I must say that I am profoundly disappointed with the Democrats when it comes to education and many other policies which I won’t go into here. Should we vote for the lesser of the two evils, which is what we have done throughout the history of this country? In this case and at this time, the GOP has become such a horrific toxic radical right wing party, I would be derelict in my duty as a citizen to not vote, to vote for some third party that doesn’t stand a chance of winning so I must vote Democratic. I wish we had a viable progressive third party but that is just a pipe dream at this point in time.
your views mirror my own.
I could never vote for the radical rightwing party that the GOP has become.
But RTTT is awful for education and educators should say so.
If the NJEA genuinely believes Obama has shown “unwavering support for education,” then they might very well be certifiably crazy.
I totally agree with you. I think many Democratic educators feel the same way. I am let down and upset by his lack of leadership in education. I never thought I would say the Bush era was better at anything. I keep hoping for the Phoenix to rise. I work for a very large school district in Los Angles and see exactly what you have described.
Whatever the motives of the corporate school reformers (i.e., improve the schools, bust the unions, or cut costs), they have thus far succeeded due to three facts:
1. Many schools, particularly low-SES-area inner-city schools, offer an unacceptable learning environment — i.e., minor but endemic misbehavior constantly disrupting instruction, many students reading far below grade level rending effective grade-level instruction largely impossible.
2. Most school systems rarely, if ever, discharge poorly-performing teachers.
3. Elected officials and school officials rarely, if ever, even acknowledge the above two problems and have completely failed to suggest reforms addressing these problems.
In my opinion, Problem 1 (student misbehavior and low reading levels in inner-city schools) is real and tremendously important while Problem 2 (retention of poorly-performing teachers) is a minor problem. However, these are real problems and, more importantly, the general public views them as real problems that must be addressed.
Corporate school reform (i.e., high-stakes testing, teacher discharge, eliminating tenure, weakening unions, charters, vouchers) offers the public solutions to these problems: identify/discharge poorly-performing teachers, hire better teachers who will solve the behavior/reading problems, and allow concerned inner-city parents to escape the chaotic neighborhood schools for charters/religious schools where all/most of the students have concerned/functional parents and accordingly behave/read acceptably).
These corporate school reform solutions are bad ideas; they will make the problems worse.
However, those who oppose the corporate school reform agenda have focused almost exclusively on attacking the corporate school reform solutions and have largely failed to offer competing solutions to the problems.
When the public — and its elected/appointed officials — have to choose between flawed solutions and no solutions to problems that are real and that the public believes are important, the flawed solutions will always win the debate.
The unions, the school administrators, the school boards, the PTAs, the ed school professors, and the national ed bloggers must propose alternate solutions to the real problems. Until we do, the corporate school reformers will continue to dominate the debate and win the critical votes.
I am not aware of many votes that the corporate reformers have won.
There are far better solutions than the corporate reforms, but none of them is a sound bite or a silver bullet.
Designs for Change in Chicago showed how 33 democratically led schools far outperformed the “turnaround” schools that Duncan has poured millions into, and they outperformed them with no additional funding.
Community outreach; experienced teachers; collaboration.
At some point, the media will stop parroting the claims of the corporate reformers, and the dance will end. But by then, we will not have a public school system in many districts.
What is truly astonishing is to see the federal government imposing untested, demonstrably ineffective programs on districts across the nation.
That is new indeed. And very innovative.
The corporate reformers have won the votes — DC, NYC, Chicago, and New Orleans are overwhelmingly Democratic cities where corporate reform has prevailed. In these cities, liberal politicians have implemented the corporate reform agenda — not because they are in the pocket of big business or anti-union zealots but because the corporate reform ideas were the only visible solutions to the real, important problem of chaotic inner-city classrooms and the real but minor problem of poorly-performing teachers. The teachers unions, the ed school professors, the school boards, and the ed bloggers must identify concrete reforms to address the problems.
Michael Bloomberg is not a liberal politician. He was re-elected for a few reasons: First, there were dramatic test score increases year after year, that turned out to be a chimera in 2010, after his last campaign. If voters had known that the scores were wildly inflated by the state’s cut score games, Bloomberg could not have claimed to be an educational magician. Magic, yes. Illusion. It also helped that he spent over $100 million in each of his elections–while his opponent spent $7 million. I would not consider that an endorsement of corporate reform. I don’t dispute that a better counter-narrative is needed. There is just no school reform plan that will fix poverty, and the reformers claim that their approach–testing and charters–will. As Wendy Kopp and Bill Gates and Duncanoften say, we don’t need to fix poverty, we need to fix schools. But at some point, the public will wake up and realize it didn’t work. The same children will be left behind..
You are dead on in your assessment. Dead on. It’s not so much that the system is as bad as many say it is…it’s that education has had its head buried in the sand for so long and failed to acknowledge or act upon the problems that legitimately exist. We – as educators – left the door open and now we are quick to complain about who came in. I too wish we had more realistic solutions to propose, rather than just shooting down everything else that is suggested.
“1. Many schools, particularly low-SES-area inner-city schools, offer an unacceptable learning environment — i.e., minor but endemic misbehavior constantly disrupting instruction, many students reading far below grade level rending effective grade-level instruction largely impossible”
Just because unacceptable behavior is occurring, and students are reading below grade level, doesn’t mean that a schools is offering “an unacceptable learning environment”. Especially in a school serving high poverty kids. The school may in fact be doing everything right, yet they are dealing with kids that are coming to school that do not value education. Poor people don’t care about education – they care about free breakfast and lunch.
“2. Most school systems rarely, if ever, discharge poorly-performing teachers.”
Wake up sir, we have 50% of teachers leave the profession (within the first 5 years) that can’t hack it. That percentage is even higher in urban areas. They “discharge” themselves. Again, wake up. A good teacher is essentially defined as one that is still around and has survived without jumping off a cliff after the 5 year mark. A really, really, really good teacher is one that has survived after 20 years in the classroom – especially in a high poverty school. That takes some guts just to show up for that many years, when in some cases you are putting your health and life on the line to just be there.
“3. Elected officials and school officials rarely, if ever, even acknowledge the above two problems and have completely failed to suggest reforms addressing these problems.”
That’s because elected officials are not educators, and they don’t know the first thing about education. You are not far behind.
They listen to economists on how to evaluate teachers. You listen to them. You’d do better listening to me.
Randi Kaye introduced the CNN interview segment with Diane with a description the current education climate of budget cuts that have led to the loss of 300,000 education jobs, as well as larger class sizes and fewer school days. How the education “reform” agenda addresses these problems is a mystery to me. Certainly further decimating the public schools by diverting public funds will not “solve” the problems. We have glimpses of successful education alternatives: community schools with wrap-around services in high poverty areas come to mind as one intriguing vision. Any solutions, however, that retain education as a public service requires investing in public education.
“…description of the current education climate…”
“Any solutions…..require investing”
That return/enter key is like a magnet.
Like I keep saying, the hostile corporate takeover of public education and the teaching profession is just one component of the Corporate Totalitarian Agenda — replacing everything we have been accustomed to regard as the Public Sector with the Non-Representational Government of Privateerism.
Cf. The Place Where Three Wars Meet
Diane, again, with all due respect, you seem to be threatened by just about everything. I find it hard to believe that you REALLY believe that these are the goals of education reformers. Testing is not the answer, but it is certainly an indicator that we are not in Kansas anymore. We need to combat poverty and public education simultaneously, working together towards a common goal. I can also tell you from firsthand experience with successful programs such as “El Sistema,” that poverty can not be used as an excuse from teachers. These kids can learn, if you build up their social and emotional learning foundation FIRST.
I can tell you that eliminating teacher unions is part of the solution, not THE solution. Self-interest groups have to lay down their swords. There are so many structural changes we need to make to our public education system. Lifetime tenure and “last-in, first out” policies are only pieces of the puzzle. We need to incorporate digital learning and train teachers in using such tools in the classroom. We need to recognize that school does not mean solely the physical walls of a classroom. We need teachers to be better educated, better trained, better compensated and fairly evaluated. Teachers need to be given the respect like they do in South Korea, where they are paid commensurate to engineers.
But the system won’t allow change, and if we won’t reinvent our public education system, then we need to fund alternatives, which could be public charter schools or some other type of blended learning environment. But please don’t scare the masses into thinking that we’re headed towards privatization of education. You really need to drop the temperature a bit. The textbook publishers who generate billions from their monopoly profits in K-12 might take offense : )
You are the victim of a false narrative. Graduation rates are the highest in history. Dropout rates are the lowest in history. Test scores on NAEP are at a historical high point for all groups. Why must we eliminate unions? So that teachers are utterly powerless and voiceless.
Reinvent_ED: There you go again.
“I can tell you that eliminating teacher unions is part of the solution, not THE solution. Self-interest groups have to lay down their swords. There are so many structural changes we need to make to our public education system. Lifetime tenure and ‘last-in, first out’ policies are only pieces of the puzzle.”
You still have not responded to the request made in another post for just what exactly the unions are doing that is bad for public education. Instead, you are spewing the same “unions are bad” stuff with no evidence of how.
Let’s shed a little light on the misinformation in your comments.
Lifetime tenure does not mean “lifetime job.” School districts have the power to bring tenure charges up on ANY tenured teacher and prove such charges are with merit. At that point, districts can and do terminate tenured teachers’ contracts. The power is with the school districts–if they do not prove that their charges are valid, then that is on them, not the unions.
The unions only protect the tenured employee’s right to a hearing on the matter. This is actually a good thing for the schools because it gives teachers a chance to speak up for themselves without fear of being fired for frivolous reasons. It provides some validity to termination instead of allowing districts to terminate teachers’ contracts for political reasons.
Tenure also grants a teacher academic freedom: “…the freedom of teachers…to teach, study, and pursue knowledge and research without unreasonable interference or restriction from law, institutional regulations, or public pressure. Its basic elements include the freedom of teachers to inquire into any subject that evokes their intellectual concern; to present their findings to their students, colleagues, and others; to publish their data and conclusions without control or censorship; and to teach in the manner they consider professionally appropriate.” (From http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/2591/academic-freedom)
Tenure is good for the schools because it encourages a dedicated staff of individuals to stay in a particular district. In the private sector, the instances of “job-hopping” (at least in a decent economy) are much greater as employees are always trying to get better-paying positions. You are aware that teachers cannot transfer tenure rights from district to district in order to get better compensation packages, right? Some districts will grant a new hire a few years against the salary schedule for “some” experience, but tenure has to be re-earned every time a teacher switches to a new district. It does not behoove teachers to go “job-hopping” since they always have to earn tenure again and again.
Non-tenured teachers live in fear that they will be fired because the principal doesn’t like their personalities or the way they part their hair. Tenured teachers have more incentive to stay with their districts. Therefore, you get a staff of teachers who invest in the school district and community. They have a vested interest in the district since they are teaching in it over the long haul.
“Last in, first out” is not a perfect system, but without it, public schools would be filled with novice teachers since districts will seek to cut expenses by firing those at the top of the salary guide. Districts notoriously hire private contractors to do large work projects on their public buildings using a practice known as “going with the lowest bidder.” For those who believe that cutting expenses in a teaching staff is a good thing, it is important to know that the most experienced teachers are the ones who mentor the novices and even those in the middle of their careers. Experienced teachers know the community and have a stake in the success of the community.
Anyone who knows anything about seniority in the private sector knows that those with the most experience in the company tend to be the people who have the most vested interest in the company. They have the most to gain and the most to lose if the company does or does not do well. Education is not exactly the same, but if you strip LIFO from the public schools, what would behoove teachers to take these jobs in the first place or to engage in professional development that brings them to a better understanding of the jobs they continually do?
Without LIFO, the experienced professionals will just move on thus making a very transient teaching staff with very little vested interest in the community. Eventually you will no longer have an experienced staff since experienced teachers would just be “terminated like expired food” in order to bring in a “fresher” and cheaper workforce. That is what stripping away LIFO will do. How is that better for the schools? If districts do not have a requirement for keeping experienced staff members first, the districts will invariably take the lowest bidder in education staff. Do you seriously want to leave public education to novice teachers?
Tenure protects a community from a transient and completely novice teaching staff. If the community invests in its teachers, the teachers will invest in the community. When people are valued, they are more likely to do their best work compared to when they do not feel valued.
What you are proposing devalues teachers, and that is never good for public education.
I think your “reform” ideas to eliminate unions are a bit skewed.
@ Reinvent_Ed
“I can also tell you from firsthand experience with successful programs such as “El Sistema,” that poverty can not be used as an excuse from teachers.”
Oh please, go to their website and look at the lineup of supporters. I wonder if there’s even one traditional public school in the whole of the U.S. that has a list of contributors like that. If we are going to compare, let’s compare fairly, or not compare at all.
I can take a group of poor students, no matter their race, and get them to learn. The first step is to get rid of all the bad kids – you know, the drug dealers, etc… Then get donors, lots of them, and lots of money. Lastly, incorporate good teachers with good technology, a meaningful curriculum and Bingo. Kids learn, scores go up, and I’m done.
MIRACLES that are not miracles at all. Quit concentrating on them, because they are never true.
“I can tell you that eliminating teacher unions is part of the solution, not THE solution.”
Eliminating people who do not know how to make simple comparisons, and jump up and down proclaiming something that is not true, based on an illogical, invalid comparison, need “eliminating” from the policy making in education. It would be greener pastures for educators the world over.
“There are so many structural changes we need to make to our public education system. Lifetime tenure and “last-in, first out” policies are only pieces of the puzzle.”
If you were an educator you would understand the underpinnings of LIFO. When people pay their dues to work in such harsh conditions, with such unforgiving people that do not value your work, they deserve LIFO. Its about paying dues and doing the time. I wish I could place you in a Title I right straight into the heart of Detroit. I bet you’d close your mouth about LIFO. Oh, and that Title I school you’d be placed at most definitely would not have the corporate sponsors of “El Sistema”.
“We need to recognize that school does not mean solely the physical walls of a classroom.”
We put a man on the moon, and have done some tremendous things within the confines of 4 walls and some desks. Other countries have those same four walls and some desks and do some pretty amazing things.
“But the system won’t allow change, and if we won’t reinvent our public education system, then we need to fund alternatives, which could be public charter schools or some other type of blended learning environment.”
Our public school system is the best in the entire world. We have led the pack in how to school ALL kids. It took 100 years to build this system that we call “public school” in order to offer ALL children a free, public education where they have the same ability to succeed. Cherry picking and recruiting long lists of donors is not how public schools work. It is no wonder you believe they are failures – you are comparing them to something they can’t be by definition.
Lastly, our public schools are not failures because our middle and upper class kids outscore the vast majority of the world on TIMSS and PISA when controlling for poverty. These two international tests justify many politicians and their cursing of public schools, yet they refuse to account for the differences of scores based on poverty. There are years of data, and practically an innumerable amount of data points, that you and your friends ignore, I guess because you like to blame teachers. Our public schools are NOT failures, they are winners. Don’t believe the media, Hollywood, the vote chasers, profit grabbers, or the job justifiers in the state and federal DOE’s.
Hello Diane
Many of these fine people are misinformed. Education is a human business. It will always be dirty. All attempts to clean it up will fail. It will never be perfect. There are reforms that public school principals, like myself, know will work well. As I said, it will never be perfect, but it can be better. Making education better involves putting people back to work. I hear no one talking about putting people back to work. Not Obama. Not Romney. Not Governor Brown. No one is talking about putting people back to work. In fact, all I hear is that less people will be working with me very soon. What we are experiencing is the Bank of America management scheme where low level workers, ie teachers, are treated poorly and kept financially needing, while a few at the top benefit greatly. Real reform to benefit students would look like this:
For revery 400 students there would be supplied 20 teachers (now 11), a counselor, a coordinator, a school security officer and a clerk. The current allocations in every category are half of that or less at my school.
Every student would have an iPad and internet access guaranteed with all of their textbooks, supplemental materials, progress monitoring assessments, periodic assessment and state assessments would be on the IPad and taken on the IPad.
We would get results back instantly so we could provide immediate intervention and give the students as many chances to demonstrate proficiency as possible during the year. The current one time do or die approach does not promote proficiency.
Teacher’s roll books would be online from the first day of the semester and parents would have daily internet access, guaranteed, to ensure they would be informed active partners with us and help monitor their student’s progress.
When I articulate these reforms regarding what it would take to have an effective safe well run academically thriving community, I am told that it will never happen. OK. That’s why I am in law school. I am changing out of this profession. The current reform movement is nothing of the kind.
By treating your professional staff as if they are incompetent and keeping them financially needing, you are ensuring the failure of the community. That is what we are doing as a society. The sad truth is that most people toss off the philosophy as if it is silly. But it is important and foundational. We ignore the philosophy of principled behavior to our severe detriment. When these so called reformers are shown to be the charlatans that they are and the public wakes up, it is going to cost a whole lot more to reinvent than it would cost to properly invest now. But the philosophy is coming from Bank of America leadership which dehumanizes us all. Remember, education is a human business. Dehumanizing it is wrong.
If one uses test scores as a measure of student achievement, then his or her credibility is suspect. In fact, the deeper people are into this type of data, the further away from the real job they are. Students are not required to do well on the tests, and just as I would not take this test if I were a high school student today, studies have shown that as many as 66% of students don’t take the tests. They fake taking the tests to pass the time. These exams count for nothing in their lives and they don’t care about them. As a high school student, you could never convince me to waste my time taking the state assessment. And there would be no consequence for me as a high school student for blowing the test off. There are many documented cases where students have actually tried to get every answer wrong. Nothing happened to them because they are released from all responsibility for their results. This is the crux of the sham of reform for me. People who spout this data and these results as reform have no credibility,
If you want high school students to perform academically, they need people employed to ride them to do it. If left to their own choices, they will spend no time with the material. For me, after 27 years of working for students, I am in law school to change my profession. If I don’t spend enough time with the material in law school, I fail. So I spend the time, but I am 61 year old. Teenagers don’t often make that choice. These reforms are all about union busting and dumping as many employees as possible in favor of a system where turnover is the order of the day as our charter school colleague correctly states. They are directly under the corporate banker umbrella in most cases and that umbrella is too small, full of holes, and affords no protection at all. That is the goal for all of us; No protection at all. If we don’t fight it now, we will not prevail and our students will not benefit by what transpires.
This has to be the most astute post I’ve read on the topic. I’m sorry that you are leaving the profession–we need more people like you in the schools.
If you decide to go back to being a principal, I will come and work for you.
After you become a lawyer, you should sue Arne Duncan for being an idiot. Oh, and every state DOE would be nice too.
Here, here.
Diane, while I respect your role(s) in education, your assertions are misleading and untrue. Please view this crafted response about who Education Reformers really are: http://www.bushcenter.com/blog/2012/08/24/who-education-reformers-truly-are-a-response-to-diane-ravitchs-conspiracy-theory-on-education-reform/
ROFL
How impressive: “Former student body president of Southern Methodist University.” Such credentials!