This note came from a reader, who may know that Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone has $200 million in the bank and two billionaires on its board. The reader wonders if Canada might help restore the library in the school where she worked in Philadelphia, which is closed due to budget cuts:
“Saw a group of charming students from Canada’s program at the 50th anniversary March on Wednesday. Staff photographing the group for PR. Gave them a copy of A. Philip Randolph’s bio with notation that high school in Philadelphia named for him has no library.
“Held up my sign:
“Philadelphia, Mississippi: 1963 Black children not allowed in libraries
“Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 2013 No school libraries”
Barbara McDowell Dowdall English Department Head (Ret.) A, Philip Randolph Technical High School
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We’d be farther ahead asking the country of Canada for help.
So Canada has $200 million in the bank. And Wendy Kopp’s Teach for America has around a 1/3 of a billion. And both of them get paid more than almost every superintendent in the United States. Meanwhile teachers in places like Michigan and North Carolina are having their pay cut as their health insurance goes up – that’s if they get to keep their jobs, which in Pennsylvania they don’t. Oh, and let’s give even more tax breaks to the wealthy in all three states. Does anyone see anything wrong in how money is skewing what happens in education?
Geoffrey Canada is a poverty pimp making $550,000 / year.
Do you honestly think his corporate masters would allow
him to give any money to a traditional public school with
a unionized faculty?
If he did, he’d kiss his $550 K goodbye.,
No, the goal is to starve those schools in to “failure” (based
on test scores, a dubious measure)—and then used that
“failure” as justification for closing the schools and opening
a privatized charter, or simply converting it into a charter,
that will be—thanks to having no oversight, accountability,
or transparency—staffed by low-paid, unqualified “teachers”
so the bosses can pay themselves the greater profits…
err… excuse me… “the non-profit surplus” that will result.
What a great line, “poverty pimp”, to use to describe Canada’s exploitation of minority children. Why defend and protect them when you can make money off of them.
Heartbreaking.
You’ve definitely have written the truth. Disgusting
Jack, while I may agree with your comments about the main thrust of Geoffrey Canada’s work, I urge you not to use racially-charged, dog-whistle phrases like “poverty pimp.” That’s the same sort of language we hear consistently from predictably sources aimed at Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others who speak up against racism and discrimination. And for that matter, it’s not unlike phrases being hurled at Barack Obama. I certainly have had criticism of all these people, but not based on race-baiting, open or veiled.
Michael,
Yeah, yeah… “pimp” conjures up the image of a mink-overcoated guy in a felt hat with a long feather who is shooting pool while being questioned by Starsky and Hutch.
You know the old phrase, “Dogs come in all colors.”
Well, “poverty pimps come in all colors,” as well. Eva, Deborah Kenney, and others non-minorities qualify as well… including Davis Guggenheim and anyone in charge of the debacle, “WON’T BACK DOWN”.
For Davis Guggenheim to portray Canada as an Albert Schweitzer- Mother Teresa-in-the-ghetto figure while omitting the fact that he pulls down $550 K / year is despicable. Davis knew this and left it out… lest he upset his corporate reform sponsors paying his own multi-million-dollar producer/director salary.
Here’s wiki’s definition of “poverty pimp”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_pimp
———————————————————
“Poverty pimp or ‘professional poverty pimp’ is a pejorative label used to convey that an individual or group is benefiting unduly by acting as an intermediary on behalf of the poor, the disadvantaged, or some other “victimized” groups.
“Those who use this appellation suggest that those so labeled profit unduly from the misfortune of others, and therefore do not really wish the societal problems that they appear to work on to be eliminated permanently, as it is not in their own interest for this to happen.
“The most frequent targets of this accusation are those receiving government funding or that solicit private charity to work on issues on behalf of various disadvantaged individuals or groups, but who never seem to be able to show any amelioration of the problems experienced by their target population.”
————————————————————————–
And here’s the Urban Dictionary definition: (you an add “or any non-minority who acts as a self-appointed proxy representative of poor minorities” to the middle of the definition)
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=poverty%20pimp
————————————————————————–
“Any self appointed minority leader, who extols the perpetual poorness of their ethnicity, yet is quite well off stemming from their efforts. Usually a Reverend of some unknown church. Marches at the drop of a hat to mug for the cameras.
“Uses White guilt to gain credibilty, money, and influence.
Are usually racists themselves.”
————————————————————————–
By the way, for those who didn’t know,
Davis Guggenheim—referenced in the
“poverty pimp” discussion produced and
directed WAITING FOR SUPERMAN,
the worst documentary ever… or
to precise..
one of the 6 documentaries on the…
“Documentaries That Were
Shockingly Full of Crap LIST”
Here it is at:
http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-that-were-shockingly-full-crap.html#ixzz2btdYTlUR
Here’s the text:
——————————————————————————–
#5. Waiting for “Superman” —
Charter Schools Kind of Suck, Too
The Film:
“Waiting for “Superman” is one of those
documentaries that made everyone who
watched it instantly call their friends and
tell them they had to drop everything
they’re doing and see it right away. Even
President Obama declared himself a huge
fan.
According to this award-winning film, only
20 to 35 percent of eighth graders in the
U.S. read at grade level, an alarming statistic
that explains so much of the Internet. It
follows a number of families as they try to
get into charter schools, which offer a free
alternative to the crushing bureaucracy that
is killing our public education system.
Tragically, not all of the families get in, damning
those kids to schools where they’ll hopefully at
least be taught how to tell when their pimp is
cutting their crack with too much baking soda.
The Fallacy:
“Waiting for “Superman” was all about improving
the country’s education, but it’s so poorly
researched and one-sided that it might actually
be making things worse.
Let’s start with that “only 20 to 35 percent can
read well” statistic:
The real number is closer to about 75 percent.
Also, you might remember a throwaway line
about how only 1 in 5 charter schools performs
better than public schools — yeah, that’s sort of
a big deal, movie. Thirty-seven percent of
charters actually perform worse.
Via Wikipedia
Unfortunately the director went to a charter school, so
math isn’t his greatest strength.
The film focuses on the charters that perform
better, of course, but at least one of those is achieving
its results through fishy means. One of the
administrators of a school shown in the film, the
Harlem Children’s Zone, expelled an entire class of
children that he feared would throw off his glowing
performance statistics.
It turns out that when teacher pay and/or school
funding is tied to student performance, a model that
the film advocates, it opens the door for all kinds of
shady shit, including flat-out expelling low-performing
students the day before the test to boost their numbers.
In the movie, not getting into a charter school is the
worst thing that can happen to a poor family, but
studies have shown that school choice itself matters
little to a student’s success — shockingly, it’s more
about how seriously the students themselves and
their families take their education.
And that ghetto public school might not actually be
so bad: According to administrators from Woodside
High School, which the film claims only sends a
third of its students to college and only graduates
62 percent of them, the film excluded students
who go to out-of-state colleges in their statistics,
and their graduation rate is more like 92 percent.
Shit, being left behind is starting to sound
awesome.
—————————————
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-that-were-shockingly-full-crap.html#ixzz2buToqRO8
According to Dr. Cornell West, Sharpton is unable to do much of anything, since he is “still on the Obama plantation.”
And your point? I have tremendous respect for Professor West, but I don’t necessarily agree with him about Sharpton. And even if I did, does that mean that because West said something demeaning that it’s open season on Sharpton?
I never use the term “poverty pimp” without the modifier “corporate”. Individual opportunists could never achieve the level of pillage the corporate high-financiers do, so we can afford to leave them alone. Until they incorporate, and become the CEO of an entity that rakes in Title I money meant to help children in public schools.
In which case, I will address my contempt to their corporation, which has no skin of any color.
Michael Paul Goldenberg,
You are utterly wrong in your defense of Al Sharpton, who has been a fraudulent misleader for decades, aiding and being supported by interests harmful to the people he claims to represent.
His reprehensible lying and character assassination during the Tawana Brawley episode is just the tip if the iceberg of this reprehensible man’s character.
In 1986, Sharpton openly betrayed Democratic senatorial candidate Mark Green, actually endorsing racist buffoon Al D’Amato for senate.
Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice has reported Sharpton’s working relationship with Republican sleaze-meister Roger Stone.
In 2001, Sharpton help elect serial school killer and privatizer Michael Bloomberg, by attacking Green again, this time when he was the Democratic nominee for mayor. Sharpton did much the same thing again, in 2005, attacking Democratic nominee Freddy Ferrer at critical moments late in that campaign. He makes a habit of such things
A notorious deadbeat – when I worked many years ago at the musician’s union, I knew a member who came close to bankruptcy because her tenant, Sharpton, had not paid rent in years – Sharpton was bailed out of serious tax troubles by a hedge fund rescue committee led by former NYC schools Chancellor and Citicorp exec Harold Levy. In exchange, Sharpton lent his melanin to a bogus school reform effort led by Joel Klein, along with a bandwagon-hopping Newt Gingrich.
The man is a mendacious, parasitical liar and manipulator, representing, not the civil rights movement, but it corrupt afterlife. He should be exposed and repudiated at every opportunity.
Well, at least I’m “utterly wrong.” I’d hate to be merely “wrong.” But then, I wasn’t defending Al Sharpton, but rather suggesting, perhaps overly subtlely, that people should be circumspect about their diction. On my view, Cornel West has some leeway in that regard that most of us do not. It’s perfectly possible to say a host of critical things about Sharpton without resorting to right-wing Dog Whistle Speak. Ken Bernstein’s comments and my own views are consonant in this regard.
FYI, I am from NYC and was there during the entire Tawana Brawley incident. I was not a fan of the Rev. Al, Alton Maddox, or Vernon Mason. But thank you for the history lesson. I’ll endeavor to only be “mostly wrong” in the future.
My point was that there are some “leaders” for whom the epithet “poverty pimp” or “hustler” are too mild to describe their behavior, no matter the origins of the term.
Also, I’d suggest that, given the cynicism, mendacity and inverted arguments of the so-called reformers regarding “the civil rights issue of our time,” using those terms can be useful.
I’m going to jump in here and try to bring readers back to the meaning of Barbara Dowdall’s sign. I am proud to be a member, along with Barb, of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools (APPS).
Barbara’s message was about the shocking step backwards education has taken in this country, evidenced by the fact that school libraries and librarians are becoming an unknown quantity in many cities. Sadly, Philadelphia’s school children will return to their schools (if they are still open) to shuttered libraries in all of the district’s schools.
This is just one part of the legacy of corporate reform.
I am going to put my comment here, admittedly belatedly. I have heavily criticized Canada on a number of issues over the past few years. I have regularly written about the obscenity of people overseeing a few thousand at most students making the kind of money he makes (although in fairness he also provides much more than merely classroom instruction). What I will not do is use the demeaning language of the extreme right. And I will not accept any kind of justification for the use of that kind of language.
Like you, Mike, I will be a fierce critic.
I will not resort to using childish epithets nor racially charged language.
I do not think it is necessary.
I think it is counter-productive, both turning off potential allies, and losing control of the framing of the issue.
School reformers have a lot of bad ideas, but the worst may be that ordinary people should be wholly dependent on the donations and good will of wealthy people.
This isn’t a new idea. It’s a very, very old idea.
It was a bad idea then, too. It led directly to revolutions.
Public school kids should not have to depend on their fundraising ability to have a school library. Do we really have to say this? I guess we do!
Good for her for drawing the connection. Not that it will get thru that thick wall of a decade ‘o dogma.
Oh they’ll just force them into charters that don’t have libraries either. They’ll have constant staff turnover and a super narrow curriculum. The CEOs will have jobs for life and make a ton of money. Wow. Where are the people like Al Sharpton, etc?
I don’t know if you-all saw this. It’s notable because it’s the Columbus Dispatch, which is a conservative paper. They were also HUGE cheerleaders for Friedmanite reform.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/09/01/charter-schools-failed-promise.html
Sixteen years later, charters statewide performed almost exactly the same on most measures of student achievement as the urban schools they were meant to reform, results released under a revamped Ohio report-card system show. And when it comes to graduating seniors after four years of high school, the Big 8 performed better.
Akin to a deregulation movement, charters operate under different rules: Operators are allowed to turn a profit from a portion of the tax money they’re given and don’t have to follow state laws that dictate everything from the distribution of textbooks to minimum teacher salaries to school-board elections. In return for that freedom, their supporters expected them to deliver strong academic results.
But what started as an experiment in fixing urban education through free-market innovation is now a large part of the problem. Almost 84,000 Ohio students — 87 percent of the state’s charter-school students — attend a charter ranking D or F in meeting state performance standards.
“Measured up against the hype of the proponents early on, this adds to the accumulation of what has to be regarded, measured (through proficiency tests), as disappointing results,” said Jeffrey Henig, a Columbia University political-science and education professor who has studied the school-reform movement.”
This is a huge concession to reality here. They admit it’s been 16 years of the reform status quo, for one thing, and they then admit (finally!) that the school don’t perform any better than they schools they replaced.
Now if they’d just admit to the lack of transparency and accountability and demand they open the books, we’d be getting somewhere. Oh, well. Maybe in 16 more years.
One good thing about the Dispatch is that they have actually reported on White Hat. If you read the comments people are ticked off.
By the way, for those who didn’t know,
Davis Guggenheim produced and directed
WAITING FOR SUPERMAN,
the worst documentary ever… or
to precise..
one of the 6 documentaries on the…
“Documentaries That Were
Shockingly Full of Crap LIST”
Here it is at:
http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-that-were-shockingly-full-crap.html#ixzz2btdYTlUR
Here’s the text:
——————————————————————————–
#5. Waiting for “Superman” —
Charter Schools Kind of Suck, Too
The Film:
“Waiting for “Superman” is one of those
documentaries that made everyone who
watched it instantly call their friends and
tell them they had to drop everything
they’re doing and see it right away. Even
President Obama declared himself a huge
fan.
According to this award-winning film, only
20 to 35 percent of eighth graders in the
U.S. read at grade level, an alarming statistic
that explains so much of the Internet. It
follows a number of families as they try to
get into charter schools, which offer a free
alternative to the crushing bureaucracy that
is killing our public education system.
Tragically, not all of the families get in, damning
those kids to schools where they’ll hopefully at
least be taught how to tell when their pimp is
cutting their crack with too much baking soda.
The Fallacy:
“Waiting for “Superman” was all about improving
the country’s education, but it’s so poorly
researched and one-sided that it might actually
be making things worse.
Let’s start with that “only 20 to 35 percent can
read well” statistic:
The real number is closer to about 75 percent.
Also, you might remember a throwaway line
about how only 1 in 5 charter schools performs
better than public schools — yeah, that’s sort of
a big deal, movie. Thirty-seven percent of
charters actually perform worse.
Via Wikipedia
Unfortunately the director went to a charter school, so
math isn’t his greatest strength.
The film focuses on the charters that perform
better, of course, but at least one of those is achieving
its results through fishy means. One of the
administrators of a school shown in the film, the
Harlem Children’s Zone, expelled an entire class of
children that he feared would throw off his glowing
performance statistics.
It turns out that when teacher pay and/or school
funding is tied to student performance, a model that
the film advocates, it opens the door for all kinds of
shady shit, including flat-out expelling low-performing
students the day before the test to boost their numbers.
In the movie, not getting into a charter school is the
worst thing that can happen to a poor family, but
studies have shown that school choice itself matters
little to a student’s success — shockingly, it’s more
about how seriously the students themselves and
their families take their education.
And that ghetto public school might not actually be
so bad: According to administrators from Woodside
High School, which the film claims only sends a
third of its students to college and only graduates
62 percent of them, the film excluded students
who go to out-of-state colleges in their statistics,
and their graduation rate is more like 92 percent.
Shit, being left behind is starting to sound
awesome.
—————————————
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-that-were-shockingly-full-crap.html#ixzz2buToqRO8
The journalist who did the story in Ohio is a longtime education writer for that paper. Stunned that it was allowed to go to press and we should all take note of this as it signals another huge crack in the foundation that once held up the big lie.
Michael Paul Goldenberg: I agree wholeheartedly with your comment.
When critics of the educational status quo use phrases like “poverty pimp” they are not borrowing FROM the playbook of the leading charterites/privatizers, they are literally playing INTO their strategy to discredit all those who point out their egregious failures.
I refer you and other readers to a blog posting by Diane Ravitch of April 6, 2013, of which the following is a part:
“A number of readers have written to ask why I wrote an an apology to Michelle Rhee when I had not been the one to speak the offending words (“Asian bitch”). I wasn’t even present when the words were spoken.”
She goes on to point out: “I don’t play by the same rules as Rhee. She goes around the nation insulting teachers and trying to persuade the public to support reactionary legislatures and governors who take away their right to have a collective voice, cut their pensions and their health benefits, and remove any job security from them. That’s wrong and I will say it’s wrong again and again.
But I won’t condone the use of ethnic or racial slurs.”
Why not? Doesn’t that mean she won’t fight hard? Well, it all depends what KIND of results you are fighting for.
“My rules include civility, courtesy, fairness, and reason. Is it fair that someone who makes $50,000 to give a speech for one hour attacks teachers who make that much in a year? Is it fair that she belittles people whose jobs are so hard and so valuable to society?”
She concludes by drawing out her last statement: “I don’t think so. I will argue it, say it, and insist upon it. But without any slurs based or [typo for “on”] race, ethnicity, or gender.”
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/04/06/why-i-apologized-for-something-i-did-not-say/
In other words, if we want to achieve the same sorts of ‘creative’ anti-democratic disruption and destruction as the leading charterites/privatizers, then let’s adopt the same tactics. If our ends are different, then so are the means we use.
One more point. Consider why this blog is anathema to the leading charterites/privatizers. Ben Austin and Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan and Paul Vallas and Bill Gates and Geoffrey Canada and so many others that catch flak here know they could post on this blog and engage in direct dialogue with thoughtful critics but they choose not to even though they know the owner of this blog would never permit gratuitous insults or outrageous conduct. Notice, if you please, that E. D. Hirsch Jr. got his chance to present his case.
But for them, what advantage could they claim? Their ideas and behaviors are so patently indefensible that they choose — not to defend themselves in a transparently public forum that neither favors nor disfavors them.
So for all their billions and celebrity and political connections and media megaphones they still find themselves, well, Voltaire said it best:
“God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.”
🙂
You know… I’ll give way on this if people
feel so strongly about it.
However, I don’t think there’s an equivalency
between the “Asian bitch” comment which
is a totally racist and misogynist euphemism—
i.e. this person is bad simply because of her
race and gender, with no other evidence
or cited behavior given—
while “poverty pimp” references an actual
known protagonist with specific behavior and a
defined role—that of an opportunistic, exploitative
phony whose self-professed altruistic
advocacy for the underclass is all
a facade.
It fits perfectly for folks like Ben Austin, Eva
Moskowitz, Davis Guggenheim, etc.
Jack: thank you.
Trust me, I am no perfect person myself and I have been tempted more than once to write things on this blog that would have gone far far beyond what you did.
I would have egregiously violated Diane’s most sensible ‘Rules of the Road’ and would have deserved to be kicked off/out of this blog. Permanently.
😦
Nonetheless, what has kept me on the, er, ‘straight and narrow’ is the constant reminder that we are ‘in it to win it.’
Not win any kind or sort of ‘victory’ however ephemeral and pyrrhic, but to literally get this country back on track to providing a “better education for all.” After almost five years on ed blogs, I have come to a rather unexpected [at least for me] conclusion about that phrase that I hope won’t make the owner of this blog too uncomfortable: it is perhaps the most radical, far-reaching slogan she could have come up with. For all the verbal pyrotechnics and farfetched rhetoric one can find on the web—including here sometimes—it is a call for profound changes in line with the highest democratic ideals.
🙂
Keep your passion. Keep posting. Just remember that you are not alone. I have noticed that sometimes when people first start posting here, there is a lot of frustration and anger and hurt and it can come out [IMHO] in unproductive ways.
Always take things with a grain of salt, but Mahatma Gandhi was not far off when he said:
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”
🙂
Beautifully said, KrazyTA!
Jack, I agree with you. The so called “reformers” come in every creed and color. People who are in minority communities should not be fooled by any of the reformers. Just because someone is the same race as you does not mean that they aren’t an opportunist who is there to pick your pockets. I have seen it firsthand. I still cannot believe that it is legal and the US DOE has helped this movement to spread. People have found their cash cows and they don’t care who they hurt.
One of the problems with attack Geoffrey Canada so utterly is the danger that some of his good ideas will be viewed in light of the overall criticism (and personal epithets) of his behavior. Imagine someone who isn’t in thrall to the neoliberal deform agenda trying some of the things Canada has done, but with integrity, with sensitivity to the community (which means not pushing out neighborhood public schools in order to expand and instead making alliances with them whenever the deformers try to play one group against the other). In order to do that, of course, that someone would have to do at least one key thing that turned me off about Mr. Canada early on, after my initial excitement about his ideas regarding bringing the whole local community into the sphere of the educational effort in school.
That would be to reject utterly the high-stakes testing metric. By so doing, one would immediately declare the refusal to allow the outside system to judge the efficacy of the project, and, rather, let that judgment come from the participants. And that would mean that there would be no need to kick out entire groups of students based on test scores, or berate a group of students because of test scores, but instead use internal and community based metrics to determine effectiveness and progress.
That Canada didn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t do this doomed him to exactly the sorts of predictable outrages he’s committed. I don’t think that makes him a “race pimp” or “race hustler” or anything of the kind. I think it makes him wrong. I think it makes him a failure when he could have been a tremendous force for positive change.
I don’t know him personally and so any comment on why he made these choices would be pure speculation on my part. My suspicion, perhaps being generous, is that he truly believed that he could succeed playing on the terms that others were defining, and that if he couldn’t play on those terms, any victory would be hollow. The sad reality is that it’s just the reverse. By allowing the high-stakes test lunatics to determine success, his whole project was instantly corrupted. Even if he’d been able to show progress without any sort of machinations, he’d always be subject to the whims of the test czars. And that’s a losing proposition for an agent of change, particularly in an oppressed community.
The system is unfortunately set up for corruption and control from those from above.
Schools are now choosing school-wide growth metrics vs. whole school individual student SLOs – the state absolutely controls the former (and hasn’t given any details on it yet) while the school controls the latter (but is subject to state review).
The latter creates thousands of pages of work to be done in an unreasonably short period of time – so everyone’s choosing the state controlled growth metric.
They control what’s on the tests, they control the cut scores and conversion matrixes.
For wanting an objective look at our children, the state, rather than someone that isn’t beholden to them isn’t making the decisions about our children’s testing. Without democracy, there’s no check on their power.
So if they say schools are failing, they fail.
Canada is a cog in this machine, but, we really need to look at those above him and are pulling his strings (his funders) because those are the ones who need to have the strings they control for the entire system, cut.
When observing the likes of Canada, Kopp, Moskowitz and other so-called education reformers, you have to ask, who says there’s no money in education?
How odd that Canada is now on the road promoting the “Generational Theft” baloney of the head of his Board of Trustees, Stan Druckenmiller. He goes around scaring young people saying that so-called “entitlements” are loans off their backs to pay for old and poor people. “Follow the money” has never been more apt.
Sheila, I had not heard of that. Geoffrey Canada is out on the road advocating for the elimination of pensions? How sad. How will it hel today’s young people if their grandparents and parents have no economic security?
Yep. There was a story and interview on WNYC this morning. The broadcast is posted on their Schoolbook page. Here’s the headline:
Geoffrey Canada, known for his education and anti-poverty work, is taking a new message to college campuses: your future is being ransacked by the elderly and the baby boomers. He wants student activists to take on the cause of more equitable federal spending.
Clever ploy. He couches his language in terms of equity while at the same time attacking the economic security of old people. His hedge fund manager friends have really thought up a 1984 type of newspeak that will appeal to people who don’t think about these things too hard.
To listen to the broadcast:
http://www.wnyc.org/section/schoolbook/#13821170918014&%7B%22apiResults%22%3A%7B%22callId%22%3A7082161%2C%22data%22%3A%7B%22viewed%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22textStatus%22%3A%22success%22%7D%7D