This is indeed an odd turn of events.
Bruce Chapman, the head of the Discovery Institute, a Reagan Republican, warns Democrats that they should take care not to offend Democrats for Education Reform because they might become Republicans.
The reason for his warning was that the California Democratic Party recently passed a resolution denouncing corporate education reform and specifically singling out DFER and StudentsFirst as fronts for corporations and Republicans.
Chapman was the founder of the the conservative Discovery Institute, which promotes “intelligent design” and is critical of evolution.
This is bizarre. Why is a Reagan Republican warning Democrats not to criticize the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ DFER? Why was his defense of DFER and Stand for Children circulated by DFER Indiana?
Is this another sign of the growing desperation of the corporate reformers? Scorned by the Democrats in California, they turn to the head of the Discovery Institute to warn Democrats not to toss them aside. How pathetic.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Okay, so I’m confused. The Democrats call out DFER as a Republican front organization even while Indiana DFER writes a nasty article about Common Core opponents (who are both Republicans):
http://www.dfer.org/branches/in/
Jay P. Greene had (IMO) a brilliant response to this attack:
So what’s up? How can an allegedly Republican front organization be attacking other Republicans? I think a more accurate description of DFER and other ed reform organizations is the other scenario: they are fronts for corporations. The corporations are headed by both Democrats and Republicans.
I don’t think organizations like DFER have any political affiliation in the least and these reformers and their organizations cannot be accurately described as Republicans or Democrats. They are the elite.
This has been a bad week for the corporate-state education reformers that want to pull the next swindle of the century on public education. Just look at the wonderful articles that are out there:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/the-coming-revolution-in-public-education/275163/#comments
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/19711841-418/state-cuts-off-money-to-embattled-uno-charter-schools-over-insider-deals.html
http://www.wbez.org/news/secret-redacted-clout-list-chicago-public-schools-106846
It truly is a hall of mirrors that is crashing upon them and a house of cards that being scattered to the wind….
Wow…Arne is sleazier than I thought and his wife is in on the schemes too and this is a buddy of our president?
They travel in elite packs pretending to care about the common folk while taking care of each other. Disgusting and shameful.
“They travel in elite packs”
Great line Linda!!!!
The Republicans don’t want them either. While the California state Democratic convention was repudiating DFER and Students First, the Republican National Committee was passing a resolution opposing DFER’s pet project, the Common Core “State” Standards.
Here’s a direct quote from the RNC resolution:
“WHEREAS, the NGA and the CCSSO, received tens of millions of dollars from private third parties to advocate for and develop the CCSS strategy, subsequently created the CCSS through a process that was not subject to any freedom of information acts or other sunshine laws, and never piloted the CCSS…”
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B558bfJRCLuuOXdsVXJmZy1IRms/edit
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m not sure the Discovery Institute itself will be welcome in the red states, if it brings DFER along in its baggage.
The Alabama Republican Party is struggling to free itself from DFER’s Republican counterpart, Jeb Bush’s corrupt “public private partnership” to advance the Common Core.
http://algop.org/algop-rnc-votes-to-oppose-common-core-inappropriate-overreach/
DFER, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Go ahead, show your true colors and leave. We can easily do without this kind of ersatz bipartisanship.
I wish they WOULD leave the Democratic Party and stop using the language of the Civil Rights Movement as a front for privatization. DFER has articles on its website about conservatives against Common Core, and I guess that’s supposed to scare Democrats into blindly supporting it. Yes, they are desperate.
I read that Florida is going to have two types of high school diplomas. One for college bound students labeled “scholars,” and one for vocational students labeled “professional.” Florida, backwards as usual.
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Florida-To-Have-2-Types-of-High-School-Diplomas-Under-New-Law-204192501.html
Eff the dems and Eff the repubs!!
And the beauty part is, Duane, they will do it amongst themselves as well as to each other. Its ironic, however, reminding me of how gangs behave–turf wars and all of the rivalry and meanness that goes with the territory. How low can they go!
Florida got $700 million from RttT.
Democrats for Education Reform have a problem, because charter school employees are organizing.
They’re voting to join unions. They say the employee turnover at charters is damaging the schools.
In my opinion, Democrats for Education Reform are going to have to choose. Do they stick with openly hostile to labor hard Right conservatives or do they defend the right of charter employees to collectively bargain?
Interesting times!
Charter school teachers are rightfully concerned about high teacher turnover, which has a very negative effect on school communities. The problem is that’s a feature, not a bug, of charter schools and so-called education reform in general.
Re-configuring labor relations and the profession at large is a major part of the entire project. Teachers are seen as a factor of production that is axiomatically to be controlled and rationalized, which in practice means transformed into a transient group of at-will employees.
Thus the deregulation of teacher accreditation, with five week wonders from TFA being given certification at the start tof their temp stints.
Those pushing charters and privatization don’t believe in teaching as a career – no surprise there: literally none of them have done it – and if you could get past their condescension and get them to speak honestly, they’d tell you that only saps remain classroom teachers.
They know the real money is elsewhere.
Michael Fiorillo: two gems.
1), high teacher turnover in charters is a feature, not a bug;
2), for the charterites/privatizers, teaching is not a profession—only saps become classroom teachers.
MF can speak [and does quite well] for himself, but I take his comments to be about the general thrust and effect of the charterite/privatizer movement, not every single charter in every single location in every epoch and era of recorded history. Exceptions there probably are, but he has extracted [perhaps at much peril—see below] much of the essence from the Most Innovaty Charterite/Privatizer Sauce of $tudent $ucce$$ and is letting us sample a bit of its aroma.
Keeping in mind the colorless and odorless nerve agent sarin, sniff at your own risk.
Many thanks for your comments.
🙂
Another great line from Michael: “Re-configuring labor relations and the profession at large is a major part of the entire project.”
Break the unions and make teachers an easily disposable commodity.
What goes around comes around for Rhee, Duncan, DFER, Whitney Tilson, etc. Narcissists like them have been causing irreparable harm across the world for centuries.
Flood DCPS with FOIA requests.
FOIA Officer
Donna Whitman Russell
1200 First St., NE
Washington DC 20002
donna.russell@dc.gov
Yes, we in Seattle where Bruce Chapman’s article was printed are shaking out heads. Why would we care what he says? Why would we care what DFER says (in Seattle, it’s a one-woman show)? The cracks are starting to show and the chickens are coming home to roost. Good. The sooner, the better.
No great loss if these DFER guys become GOP. To me, they are Republicans already.
Who gives a shit whether they are dims or rethugs???
An identity crisis! A snake with two heads. Which way shall I we go?
The veil is being lifted exposing a bipartisan disaster in spite of the mega-wealth controlling the official narrative, a narrative that in turn drives disastrous policies.
Way to go big media. Superman IS fiction after all.
I love paradoxes. It has long been my hope and prayer that the decades long efforts to control and discredit public education would in good time serve instead to expose the arrogance, greed and hypocrisy behind the failing schools/failing teachers narrative.
And lead to reforms that actually help rather than exploit the plight of poor children.
How long we have waited to see the tide begin to turn!
And thanks to Diane for her HUGE part in all of this–keeping everyone informed about everything reform going on all over the globe, and for providing a forum for discourse, planning and action. All of this without an assistant even.
Tauna, you’re correct–there is no Superman, but the public schools have their Superwoman, and her name is Diane!
Yes! “All of this without an assistant even.”
Again, even mega-wealth (the Billionaires Boys Club) cannot hide the truth forever.
Is a talking pineapple the intelligent design segment of the common core?
Little known fact: Bruce chapman chaired the 200-2001 Washington State Commission on Student Learning that hammered out the details of No Child Left Behind for our state.
Good riddence to Gloria Romero et al. Go be who you really are instead of wolf’s in sheeps clothing. You can watch Romero and her pals at George1la when we ask some tough questions. Have some fun and learn who they really are. Same with Rhee when she was in L.A. last year we have it up at George1la uncut. This is how you learn who they really are when they are talking to the “True Believers.”
No surprise here.
What they believe in is based upon faith, not facts.
DFER is short for DEFORM. Ed Deform. DFERs are DINOs.
I pretty much tune out anything Lisa McFarlane (DFER Seattle) has to say, knowing her agenda is charters, charters, charters and her primary goal is hobnobbing with the elite billionaire boys club.
http://www.salon.com/2005/08/27/gatesfoundation/
“Intelligent Donation?,” by Farhad Manjoo, Salon, August 26, 2005.
Bill Gates gave the Discovery Institute 10 million dollars.
“Bruce Chapman, the head of the Discovery Institute, a Reagan Republican, warns Democrats that they should take care not to offend Democrats for Education Reform because they might become Republicans.”
I thought they were. Guess I was fooled.