This comment was just posted in response to an earlier piece today:
I’m also a money manager and have noticed the same phenomena remarked upon by your correspondent.
It is certainly true that moneyed oligarchs, their children, or their friends never have to suffer the consequences of the education mayhem they are unleashing. They are chefs that do not eat the cooking. They know the answers and are not interested in the facts of what is actually happening.
The main impulse for what they do is self-aggrandizement. For example, when you create a charter school, you typically create a board so that your friends can burnish their resumes and feel like they are giving back. If you give enough money, like a Bruce Rauner or a Pritzker, you get your name engraved and maybe even displayed in lights outside. Of course, you also get clout with city by having created a nice shiny object that the mayor can point to come election time.
How do you stop this? I don’t think you’ll ever change the minds of the top dogs, but if you change the narrative among the people they associate with, then you will start to see “education reform” as no longer being something that people want to automatically be associated with. Make it controversial and toxic. For example, get the message through that all of the reforms don’t actally work and are counterproductive. Spread publicity about the fraudsters, shysters, and boodlers in the “education reform” industry. Continually remind them of the deeply disparate racial impact of their policies, and that most minority communities seem to want their community schools and don’t see them as failures. Get them to interact face to face with the people they’re hurting by spreading information, canvassing, marching, and protesting in wealthy communities, for example in Lincoln Park and Lakeview in Chicago.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What fine advice!
Make the chefs taste their own cooking. 🙂
They probably won’t like what they eat.
That is a fabulously articulate post. I think it should be published in every newspaper opinion page tomorrow and then daily every following day until the word is out–corporate reform hurts children.
No, you can’t change their minds, but they may lose interest in school reform. Most charitable events that I have been to are just excuses to socialize and “pretend” that you care about certain causes. It’s all about “appearance” and “perception”. Most people are selfish, and the rich even more so. They just do these things as status enhancements. If school reform is seen as unseemly or destructive, many rich people will not want their picture taken at those events. As a teacher with wealthy connections, I can tell you that most of the rich don’t care much about public education either way. They send their kids to private school on principle. The public schools are for the “unwashed masses”. They use private schools to separate their children from the commoners. The old money saw public schools as giving back to their butler’s kids or their cook’s children, and they weren’t bothered by paying taxes (chump change anyway). The new money see taxes for public schools as irritating, and they want to keep as much money as they can, and don’t care about their cook’s children, city children, etc. The “new money” have no interest in community or helping others. That is the worst kind. When the rich (old and new) realize that the problem really can’t be fixed, and not all kids are “A” students or intellectuals, they well get bored of it and go back to other charitable events. Most of the “old money” people I know are not involved with school reform. They are normally smart enough to see through this stuff. They also don’t believe that all people can be “intellectual” or “elite”. I would bet that this is a “new money” project that is also supposed to break unions, lower property taxes, etc. Many probably may have no interest in “reform” at all, just like they don’t care about nature, or helping Africa either. At least the “old money” cared about the less fortunate.
“. . . but they may lose interest in school reform. ‘
They will only lose interest in school reform when they can’t make easy money off of it. Making a ton of money is all they’re interested in. They’d be quite happy to have public education turn out like the military and prison “industries”.
It worries me that people on both sides of this debate of the deforms paint with such broad brushes. There are some truly vile examples of hucksterism in the charter world, –real estate scams being run on the taxpayer dole, for example, but there are some really great charter experiments too, ones that add to the alternatives available to kids, who, after all, differ enormously. It is because kids differ enormously that these top-down, one-size-fits-all deform mandates are properly characterized as educational weapons of mass destruction.
And on the particular topic of this post, I suspect that there are egregiously misinformed wealthy education amateurs who simply don’t understand how much damage they are doing, that many are well intentioned and see themselves as giving back. The road to hell is paved with a lot of these good intentions. People have to know a great deal about matters like the science of language acquisition and the curriculum development business as a business to begin to understand why the new CCSS in ELA are a huge mistake. One can’t expect people, even very, very capable and bright people without the requisite background to understand what the problems are until these are explained to them, but there is no current mechanism by which that can occur. It may be that we’re simply going to have to live through the horrific consequences of these reforms and then look back upon them with deep regret.
Robert D. Shepherd: I wrote the comment below before I saw your comment. So read the following with the proviso that I agree with you.
**********
IMHO, a perceptive posting that makes plain what some posters on this blog seem to forget or misunderstand:
That one of the most important functions of “Diane Ravitch’s blog A site to discuss better education for all” is to change the narrative.
To make teacher bashing and the destruction of public schools “as no longer being something that people want to automatically be associated with.” To make the hazing ritual of high-stakes standardized tests and the notion of enriching oneself off OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN “controversial and toxic.” To convince more and more people that enriched curricula, small class size and experienced career educators are proven winners while getting out the message “that all of the reforms don’t actually work and are counterproductive.” To widely circulate available information “about the fraudsters, shysters, and boodlers in the ‘education reform’ industry.”
Think it doesn’t make a difference? The education establishment—for all their tough talk—is amazingly thin-skinned. And they are losing control of the conversation.
Proof? Hey, Doctor Steve Perry laid it down: “Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t” [channeling rapper Jay-Z]. With less a year and a half on the web, this site has almost six and a half million views.
ArneRhee&Co., eat your hearts out.
🙂
In the meantime, until we come to our senses, a lot of kids are going to be grievously harmed, and don’t even get me started on the opportunity cost of following this path instead of starting afresh to think scientifically about what standards in the various domains commonly referred to as the English Language Arts might look like. That cost, too, is very, very high.
“. . . but there are some really great charter experiments too, ones that add to the alternatives available to kids, who, after all, differ enormously.”
Joe, Joe Nathan is that you? Have you mind warped yourself into Robert’s head?
Money Manager’s advice is Spot On.
We must keep the narrative rolling out and among the most powerful negatives are the detailed descriptions of the toxic techniques used to mis-educate, control, shame, silence, stratify and finally, to remove from the school should the students persist in not cooperating with the deliberate diminishment.
This post could easily be the main reason for the existence of Diane Ravitch’s blog!
Good charters are outnumbered by bad charters by two or three to one, and the ‘good ones’ with high test scores most often achieve better scores rejecting and/or counseling out students with special needs and/or low test scores. It’s educational apartheid.