EduShyster here recounts the sad tale of billionaire John Arnold, who apparently did not like my apology to him for a factual inaccuracy in an earlier post.
I made a factual error in a post on October 10. I said that he left Enron with $3 billion. That was an honest error on my part. I wrongly assumed that is where he became a billionaire. But he made his billions after he left Enron.
Imagine the scenario. I am in the hospital, concerned about blood clots and leaky heart valves, when my literary agent emails to say she just received an email from John Arnold’s lawyer, saying that I had defamed him. My literary agent is also a lawyer, and she advised me that since John Arnold is a public figure and since I did not act maliciously, he was unlikely to prevail in a court of law.
My immediate reaction was that I did not wish to engage in litigation with a billionaire, so–from my hospital bed–I wrote and posted an apology.
Arnold decided to give $100,000 to some organization dedicated to fact checking.
I have decided to give $100 to the American Civil Liberties Union to protect free speech in the United States.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I hereby vow to throw a penny into a wishing well. I will wish for a fair and open debate on the future of American education, free of legal threats.
This kerfuffle reminds me of the time Mitt Romney tried to make a $10,000 bet on the stage of the Republican presidential debate. Working Americans can’t casually throw around $10,000, let alone $100,000. And for working Americans, $4 million is such an unattainable amount of money that it may as well be $3 billion.
Thanks, John Arnold, you’ve proven how out of touch with reality you and the other billionaire education reformers really are. No one who considers $100,000 pocket change should be engaged in dismantling public education or pensions for working families.
Edushyster’s piece was hilarious! I’m sorry you had to deal with this when you should have been dedicating your energies to healing.
Maybe you could include a note with your donation:
Dear ACLU: Where the hell are you guys as civil rights are turned on their head with our public schools being deregulated and privatized?!
Sadly, the ACLU has joined the privatizers in California and is working through the courts to overturn teacher’s seniority rights. I had to tell them not to call on me for a membership renewal because I can’t support an organization that is working to destroy our profession. Check out the Reed suit: http://www.aclusocal.org/issues/education/
Please fill in the details as from their summary it doesn’t seem to be about seniority rights but of having adequate staffing at all schools.
You go, Diane.
Thank you for supporting ACLU. We do, too. FREE SPEECH is just about GONE in the United Stasi. Keep on, Diane. you go, and spread the truth. The deformers are afraid of you. I love it. They don’t like the truth of day to shine for all to see…’cause unfortunately this administration and the deformers have made deals with the devil at the cost of our young, our teachers, our parents, and this country. Thank you, thank you, Diane…again.
Google the name John Arnold along with the words Head Start and you will see report after report from all the major news media about the $10M that Arnold gave to Head Start. The majority of those reports say nothing about the fact that this was a LOAN, and Arnold was showered with praise for his philanthropy.
If Arnold cares so much about “fact checking” and the truth, then he should call out every journalist who inaccurately drenched him in accolades and reported that his LOAN to Head Start was a “donation,” “gift” etc. as vigorously as he went after a 75 year old woman for an error she made when she was ill and hospitalized.
Such is the state of mainstream media reporting these days.
Mainstream education reporting is as bad, or worse.
Check out this recent piece in The Atlantic, by Emily Richmond, the “public editor” at The Educated Reporter, where the article also appears. (The Atlantic’s in-house education “reporter” is Julia Ryan, a newbie from Harvard, who seems to be clueless about both SAT and NAEP scores.)
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/is-it-better-to-have-a-great-teacher-or-a-small-class/281628/
By the url alone it seems that there is a false dichotomy of “great teacher” vs “class size”. Why not have both? The problem being how to identify what a “great teacher” is. Quite easy to identify a “small class size”.
Dear Ms. Ravitch,
Shouldn’t someone tell Mr. Arnold that it doesn’t do any good to throw money at the problem?
great point, Miron!
I applaud the ACLU contribution. Not sure about Arnold’s fact checking organization though. As aside, I hope your on the road to a speedy recovery.
Can there be any doubt why the leading charterites/privatizers amply deserve the label “edubullies”?
And when you’re an edubully like John Arnold you can spare yourself the casual effort of harassing a ill 75-year old lying ill [perhaps seriously] in the hospital by simply outsourcing it to your lawyer.
Ah, the joys of being a member of the Billionaire Boys Club! You make money just like you harass— the old fashioned way, like the kings and emperors and robber barons of old, by having others do all the work.
Ain’t the Cagebusting Twenty First Century grand!?!?! $tudent $ucce$$ must be just around the corner!
😎
P.S. Although, John, if you rheeally want to throw million dollar loans at problems, the folks on this blog might be able to offer a few worthwhile suggestions…
😄
I’m not sure we could afford the interest. I’m sure he would expect a “reasonable” return on his investment.
Someday we will learn that free speech is not really free on an equal basis and is more available to those with large amounts of money. The Free Press media is always accessible to the wealthiest individuals whenever they have a need to sell an idea or product such as Common Core Standards and the unrealistic and amoral assessments used to increase spending on more and more software solutions to a problem that can never be solved with computer technology. I wonder when parents will realize that these people know they are selling the idea of reaching the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and as we all know, no one ever gets this pot of gold except for the Billionaires who just keep getting wealthier. You have to almost admire them because they know how to play this game so well, except for the fact that this time if they win the game, they will at the least destroy children’s futures and in an overwhelming win, they will destroy the unique American idea of educating ALL children regardless of their parents current socioeconomic position in society. We are at the tipping point, so I am praying for my grandchildren and their future and trying to speak out. I hope other parents and grandparents understand the possible loss if they do not get involved SOON! I am so disappointed that we have allowed it to come to this point. I think about all of the people who ask “How did the German people allow a Hitler to take over a well-educated country?” If you are wealthy enough, then you have the ability to buy the FREE PRESS and control the message, even in America! I wish we would do something similar to the 60’s March on DC. This may be our only option to change the direction of this ever-increasing snowball as it rolls downhill out of our control!
MT5,
“. . . the unrealistic and amoral assessments. . .”
Did you mean immoral (not moral) instead of amoral (without morals)?
Because I see the usage of standardized tests to be immoral and unethical. The tests themselves are amoral as they are not human and therefore cannot be ascribed as being immoral.
You made me laugh out loud. He should review caselaw NY Times v. Sullivan.
Keep walking, and talking, Diane. You are terrific.
John Arnold did, in fact, walk away from Enron with some significant cash.
And John Arnold has been trying to privatize public pensions (Arnold calls it “reform.”).
Yet, the research just does not support him. For example, here’s what an actuarial report on defined benefit pensions states:
“some have proposed replacing traditional defined benefit (DB) pensions with 401(k)-type defined contribution (DC) retirement savings plans in an effort to save money. But decision makers would be wise to look before they leap. To deliver the same level of retirement benefits, a DB plan can do the job at almost half the cost of a DC plan. Hence, DB plans should remain an integral part of retirement income security in an increasingly uncertain world because they offer employers and employees a better bang for the buck.”
See:
Click to access Bang%20for%20the%20Buck%20Report.pdf
But that doesn’t stop the charlatans from trying to cash in.
It’s no different when it comes to education “reform.”
The “reformers” are not really interested in improving public education. They’re after the money.
Sad and pathetic are words that don’t come close to explaining and describing these kinds of people.
But avaricious and narcissistic does.