Yesterday Rick Hess posted his “Edu-Scholar Rankings,” in which he and a committee of advisors tallied up multiple measures (not test scores!) and ranked the university-affiliated scholars who are most influential in the public arena. The rankings are based on the number of mentions on Google Scholar, highest Amazon ranking, education press mentions, book points (how many books one authored or co-authored), web mentions, Klout ranking, newspaper mentions, Congressional Record mentions. He describes the rubric and lists his advisors here. Linda Darling-Hammond and I finished up in the top two slots, in a dead heat. Third was Howard Gardner. Then Gary Orfield, Paul Peterson, Andy Hargreaves, David Berliner, Larry Cuban, Yong Zhao, Gene V. Glass. That’s the top 10. It is interesting that only one of the top 10 (Paul Peterson) is a prominent advocate for test-based accountability and choice.
So, being the critical thinker that I am, I wonder if it is true that the other nine–myself included–are influencing public opinion. We certainly are ignored by policymakers at the U.S. Department of Education. I don’t see any national policies based on the work of Linda, me, Gary Orfield (his passion–desegregation–has been forgotten), Yong Zhao, Howard Gardner, Andy Hargreaves, Gene Glass, David Berliner, or Larry Cuban.
Maybe there is some metric that is missing from Rick Hess’s rating system. Whom does Arne Duncan listen to? Who has the ear of the President and Bill Gates? Those are the men who make national policy. Who influences them?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Money
Right!
Almost all progressives to one degree or another.
I think if we did similar system to rate scholars in other areas we’d find the same thing. The top ratings on Google Scholar, highest Amazon ranking, education press mentions, book points don’t necessarily mean major influence on policy. That would probably also be true for international relations, biology, medicine, etc.
The first comment above seems to nail it precisely.
I disagree with Rick Hess. There are sooooo many more than who he names.
And YES….follow the $$$$$.
Sure the US Dept. of Education listens to Diane Ravitch.
It’s a special kind of listening, though, called “monitoring.”
From a posting on this blog, 8-20-2013, “Should The US Government Monitor People Like Me?”
[start blog posting]
I recently learned that the Obama administration “monitored” me.
Two years ago, blogger Mike Klonsky tweeted that the U.S. Department of Education had a secret task force to watch me. He was ridiculed by Secretary Duncan’s press secretary in response. But now the Assistant Secretary for Communications acknowledges that he monitored me and others.
It’s no secret that I never thought much of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top. RTTT was released not long after I realized that George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was a failure. I thought President Obama would ditch high-stakes testing and federal sanctions and chart a new course.
He didn’t. He built on the foundation of NCLB and made the stakes even higher by tying teacher evaluations to test scores. So I referred to Race to the Top as “NCLB on steroids” or “NCLB 2.0.”
I met Secretary Duncan in the fall of 2009, and we spent an hour alone talking. I talked about the failure of NCLB, the flaws of high-stakes testing, the risk of sacrificing the arts, history, and everything else because of making test scores so important. He smiled, he was charming, he took notes, we had our photo taken together. He is very, very tall. But nothing I said made a difference.
Now I learn that the Department of Education “monitored” me. Did they have the right to do that? I am not a terrorist. I don’t lead a secret organization. It’s just me, a critic of their policies.
Who else was monitored? What does it mean to be monitored? I don’t know.
It just doesn’t feel right when the government, with its vast powers, uses people to watch and monitor critics. It reminds me of Nixon’s “Enemies’ List.”
[end blog posting]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/20/should-the-u-s-government-monitor-people-like-me/comment-page-1/
Call me old fashioned, but I would rather be “listened to” than “monitored.”
I may be presumptuous, but I have the distinct feeling that the owner of this blog would agree with me…
😎
I wonder if number 197, Sarah Reckhow, would have ranked higher if her 13 minute explanations of the methods of using their money to impact education policy would have bumped her up higher….it was just aired on American Radioworks http://www.americanradioworks.org/follow-the-money-unpacking-education-philanthropy/
I wonder if number 197, Sarah Reckhow, would have ranked higher if her 13 minute explanations of the corporate foundations’ methods of using money to impact education policy would have been counted….it was just aired on American Radioworks
I assume you meant that you national policies based on your *recent* work.
cx: “that you [don’t see any] national policies . . . “
Interesting that Rick Hess hands us something to beat up the Duncan cabal with. I’m almost suspicious.
I can understand when you wonder about whether you are influencing public opinion.
I wonder all the time if the enormous time I devote to getting the truth out there, is actually falling on the ears of the public.
BUT you are one of Politicos 50 for a good reason. YOU have proven that you are fearless and will talk truth to power.
YOU created this space, where authentic voices of teachers from across the spectrum discuss the things that YOU think are crucial to the conversation… and you hit it on the nose…YOU ARE A CRITICAL THINKER.
YOU are being heard by us, and thus what you see clearly as IMPORTANT appears here.
We must do the rest, because the public does not come here for its education news…. they go to Fox, and the Daily News, and The Post and the Enquirer and a few to The NY Times, which did not invite you to share your blog, or write a column.
The teachers will make the difference if they can get their act together, and support the voices who explain the problem in a ludic, practical manner.
If teachers allow the administration to run rough-shod over them and do not sue for the Bill of Rights due process to be followed…nothing will change.
Today, in the NY Times the issue of DUE PROCESS came up, because until there is a restoration of this crucial element where TESTIMONY is taken, it is just hear-day, and anything can be said!
Here are the crucial words for the restoration of order: “the new code focuses candidly on already well known excesses that for too long have invited uncontrolled and even criminal behavior on some campuses.”
Can you see how this applies to the school workplace: Criminal behavior is thwarted when leaders cannot commit perjury.
The editorial continues: … “the leaders made the point that in allegations of misconduct ‘universities must demonstrate more respect for the fundamental rights to due process’ ”
YOU will be heard Diane, when teachers demand and get their fundamental right to due process, so the lessons that they know will work can be planned and executed with our some supervisor documenting their insubordination, and incompetence, because they did not put up a ‘word-wall’ or use the mandated text to ‘teach’.
Under penalty of perjury, principals must be sworn, so that when they say Miss Marple sucks,” evidence must be provided, and proven.
Until then, all the innovations and reforms, all the presentations here and in The American Edcuator and other respected venues, will not make it into the schools. $$$ buys the media and the truth in this nation.
Arne Duncan listens to Pear$on–you know, just like the Chas. Schwab commercial–Pear$on talks, & Arne stands still. BTW–accurate cartoon today (“Bliss” by Harry Bliss)–picture of a building w/the sign Department of Education in front, with balloon coming out of an office window, “…what if we left ALL the children behind?” (The capitalized word ALL is also underlined.)
Diane, you asked some questions above. I believe (and have ‘taught’ in my classrooms) that the EQ (essential question) offers the road to the SOLUTION. I love questions — so I want to address yours, as they are written to us… to me.
YOU SAID: “Maybe there is some metric that is missing from Rick Hess’s rating system”
Indeed there is a METRIC MISSING, and THAT METRIC is the crucial ingredient…. the metric that is missing across the spectrum is the one created by experienced AUTHENTIC classroom practitioners, — TEACHERS (like Dan Geery, Lloyd Lofthouse, Pi Lian Tu, and me , for example) who constantly judge if learning is ongoing in front of them… in THEIR practices.
OUR voice is missing. My voice is missing! Academic scholars are rated, but if Google is a measure, how about the attention some genuine, classroom PROFESSIONAL teachers are getting? Now, there is a question! Who is reading me, at Oped, where I had 250,000 views of articles I post, or here????
The metric provided by the VOICE of the teacher is NOWHERE to be found, because they have effectively silenced them…. look at Nevada… no educators not a single teacher directs ed policy at the top!
Teachers have no voice when any and all APs or supervisors, or business people can, without PENALTY OF PERJURY judge them.
YOU ASKED: “Whom does Arne Duncan listen to? Who has the ear of the President and Bill Gates? Those are the men who make national policy. Who influences them?
Now, you know that the answer to that one is known by everyone here. It is THE rhetorical question where the answer NAILS the truth….
The ear of these people are held by Dark Money
http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/22/5-signs-dark-money-apocalypse-upon-us/?utm_source=General+Interest&utm_campaign=94370722aa-Midweek_0924149_24_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4ebbe6839f-94370722aa-168347829.
The media is bought, lock stock and network.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/john-nichols-and-robert-mcchesney-on-big-money-big-media/œ
and they whisper in the ears of legislators, too.
Want proof? The first thing that our new Congress introduced On Its Very First Day Back was was A National Abortion Ban.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/01/07/3608821/congress-20-week-abortion/?
Then. these elected officials (with a 14% approval rating,) went on to Move To Gut Social Security Benefits –this, on Their First Day in Power
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/07/1356086/-Republicans-Move-To-Gut-Social-Security-Benefits-on-Their-First-Day-in-Power?detail=email#
So you may ask, who are they listening to?
Certainly not us.
Probably to the same $$$persons who direct Duncan.
Now, Diane, how do we make LOUD AND CLEAR to the citizens — the voices of the academic scholars, YOUR amazing voice and the voice of the CLASSROOM PRACTITIONER, too.
“Maybe there is some metric that is missing from Rick Hess’s rating system.”
The missing metric is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
That is the single most important metric necessary to truly influence the policies of today’s corporate controlled policy makers. This is not capitalism, this is vulture capitalism at its most destructive.
Bill Gates purchases policy as his villainthropist foundation accrues additional billions of dollars, much of which comes from tax dollars.
You got it right: “Signs That the Dark-Money Apocalypse Is Upon Us” Moyers explains how ‘dark money’ runs the show.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/22/5-signs-dark-money-apocalypse-upon-us/?utm_source=General+Interest&utm_campaign=94370722aa-Midweek_0924149_24_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4ebbe6839f-94370722aa-168347829.
and this one explains why the media follows Duncan and not Diane.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/john-nichols-and-robert-mcchesney-on-big-money-big-media/œ
and this one is my favorite, because I all the current crop of plutocrats, ‘robber barons” and Moyers explains how the original robber barons were different at a time when there was growing disparity between the wealth at the top and everyone else.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/19/web-extra-new-robber-barons/
Reference and citation lists for USDE’s policies are not hard to find. Those lists tell you “who is who,” “who is hot” as a policy wonk, and who is not. Many economists have become USDE’s preferred experts on education. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is because they have proven to be so poor at keeping the economy from tanking and just need work.
In the mean time, some people who might be assumed to have expertise are lining up to shape the reauthorization of NCLB. Some muddled thinking comes from Russ Whitehurst, the former director of the Institute of Education Sciences at USDE, whose bio says he is “an expert on reading, teacher quality, student assessment, learning and instruction, education technology, and preschool programs.”
Whitehurst and three other senior fellows at the Brookings try to make “The Case for Annual Testing” in a January 8, 2014 brief intended to tell Congress how to edit and reauthorize NCLB.
The writers think NCLB tests are not only necessary, but sufficient for federal “management of improvements” in education.
They assert that tests are valid (no qualifiers, no “if-then” reasoning). They assert that tests only take a day to administer. (Yes, only one day). They borrow Arne Duncan’s mean-spirited rhetoric to put down those who oppose testing. They seem to be totally unaware that contracts have been put in place for PARCC and SBAC tests and these will replace statewide tests in ELA and math for NCLB reporting.
These senior fellows also think that test scores of students in grades 3-8 can be relied on to estimate the earnings of these students later in life, and can also be used to determine the effectiveness of teachers. They trust economists on these matters— Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff.
This really muddled brief is intended to convince Congress, that NCLB should be reauthorized so it keeps the federal mandates for testing in place, while allowing states to do their own thing on standards and accountability. (Yep, those state-led standards aka the Common Core are offered up as if they are suddenly “a take it or leave it” affair and totally disconnected from their corresponding tests.) Magical thinking.
In addition to not knowing much at all about test scores—how these are linked to standards, and increasingly determine curriculum and instruction—the Brookings fellows offer some ugly reasoning on why everyone, especially teachers unions and progressives, should want a continuation of the NCLB testing regime.
The political pitch for annual testing is that teachers will hide failures unless kids are tested. They plainly want readers of this document to believe that teachers do not care about equity and do not care about subgroups of students unless teachers are compelled by federal law to pay attention. The same law will compel all kids to be tested every year and this is the main virtue ascribed to the existing law.
These pontificators about policy regard the test scores mandated by NCLB as authoritative measures of the “success” of the law in addition to being the definitive proof of equity in American education.
“One of the undeniable successes of NCLB was to expose to public scrutiny the failures of many of our public schools to adequately educate disadvantaged subgroups. If information on student learning from annual testing disappears, so too will the attention to the needs of subgroups that are illuminated through annual testing. Progressives should support annual testing for reasons of equity.”
The “case” for keeping tests has four parts. Most are assertions with nothing but hot air to support them.
1) ”test scores are valid indicators of student learning that matters for important long-term outcomes and therefore provide essential information on school performance,”
2) “several important functions for (federal) managing and improving education depend on annual measures of student achievement growth,”
3) “federal control of standards and accountability is unnecessary whereas the provision of information on the performance of schools is a uniquely federal responsibility,”
4) “most of the political opponents of standards, testing, and accountability should favor the retention of annual testing shorn of federally dictated standards and accountability.”
Changing the rules of NCLB will do little to reverse the state legislation shaped to match federal policies. So, for example, state legislators in Ohio require 50% of a teacher’s evaluation to be based on VAM the “student growth achievement” measure known to be invalid for any purpose unless you assign students to classrooms on a random basis—and that makes no sense educationally.
These fellows seem to think that is possible to decouple annual tests for “student achievement growth” mandated at the federal level from standards, curriculum, instruction, and the glut of accountability measures in each of the states.
Political posturing is clearly ON among Washington insiders. This offering is so poorly written and reasoned it deserves an F.
See for yourself at http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/01/08-chalkboard-annual-testing
“They assert that tests are valid (no qualifiers, no “if-then” reasoning).”
And either they haven’t read and understood Wilson’s proof that the tests are indeed INVALID or they purposely ignore his work because it completely destroys their testing discourse. In either case such lapses are major fault lines in their supposed scholarly work.
Whitehurst, et. al., have you read Wilson* and if so what are your rebuttals and/or refutations?
*“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
By Duane E. Swacker
Who has the ear of the President and Bill Gates?
Who has the ear of the President
andbesides Bill Gates?Fixed.
“Eargnorance is bliss”
If eargnorance is bliss
Obama’s on cloud nine
Cuz Gates has both of his
And test and VAM are fine
From the article:
“I think the same can be said about U.S. News college rankings, NFL quarterback ratings, or international scorecards of human rights. For all their imperfections, I think such efforts convey real information—and help spark useful discussion.”
Mom, apple pie and rankings. Rankings, how thoroughly modern American discourse that certainly conveys very little “real information”!!! We Americans love our mental masturbations of rankings, eh!?!?!?
“Mom, apple pie and rankings.”
Eh, why not. Apparently this is baseball:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/tz_runs_total_ss_career.shtml
Interesting rankings for SS’s. There’s a couple in the top twenty whom I don’t readily recognize, but then again before Aparicio, Banks, etc. . . was before my time.
Thanks for that list.
Now who was the greatest SS of all time?
There are no answers, only arguments. Deadball era, it’s Honus Wagner.
Of the ones I saw play: Ripken, Yount, or Jeter, depending on my mood. I’ve had a couple drinks, I might say Ozzie. Three drinks, Trammell.
Just going by stats, and if you don’t care whether he played his full career at shortstop, but you do care about steroids: Ernie Banks.
Just going by stats, and if you don’t care whether he played his full career at shortstop, and you DON’T care about steroids: A-Rod.
“There are no answers, only arguments.”
And that is why baseball is one of my favorite sports.
In hockey, there are no answers or arguments.
Just fights.
And that’s why hockey is so popular.
In hockey, the answer is usually Gretzky.
My answer would probably be Gretzky too, but if you think goalies don’t get enough credit then how about Ken Dryden?
I don’t have the experience or knowledge to begin to rate goaltenders, and Dryden was before my time. They probably don’t get enough credit because, starting at the younger levels, hockey is about skating, and there’s the stigma that if you were any good, you’d be skating instead of standing in goal with 10 pounds of pads on. So it’s a mysterious art they develop.
FLERP!,
Goaltenders have to be the best skaters on the team. Having been a goalie (mainly because I could make my own equipment and I got intense enjoyment out of seeing the shooters get pissed when they thought they should have had a goal and I robbed em) at the collegiate club hockey level (admittedly not that high a level but still playing on an everyday basis with some pretty decent players) I made it a point to outskate some of our slower players in skating drills. Think about it, the goalie has to be able to skate backwards and sideways in response to the players coming at them going forward and sideways. (and actually skating backwards is easier than going forward). I’m not talking about the current over padded flip flop stay on your knees leaving the upper third of the goal open as today’s netminders do
Another goalie that seems to have been forgotten is Grant Fuhr.
“Skating backwards is easier than going forward”
Speak for yourself!
@ FLERP
Ken Dryden is timeless; he is a hockey god.
~ Sharon, member of the Lynah Faithful
“Who influences them?”
Bottom line: money
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
And only two women……..
Pessimist-ha ha! Hey they’re at the top of the list though!!
Here’s the question you posed at the end of your post:
Whom does Arne Duncan listen to? Who has the ear of the President and Bill Gates? Those are the men who make national policy. Who influences them?
Here’s my answer: they listen to each other!
There is an echo chamber at the top and they all listen to each other… and they ALL believe the answer to school improvement is to “run schools like a business” and the proxy for “profit” is “standardized test scores”. I think Diane’s personal experience in DC is instructive. She looked at the facts and decided that annual testing of children was counter-productive and ultimately concluded it was being used to promote privatization. In order to break through the echo chamber effect we need to get a critical mass of political leaders to have the same epiphany as Diane. How?
I think the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) might be a good place to start (see http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/caucus-members/). The CPC has not weighed in on the reauthorization of NCLB, but I know at least two of the members would be very sympathetic to the issues Diane raises in this blog. I believe the CPC would look at the results of over two decades of standardized testing and conclude that it has not improved the overall performance of students. The CPC would look at the disaggregated data NCLB provided and the “reform” remedies and have them see for themselves that testing, vouchers, charter schools, and privatization and conclude that they have not improved the overall performance of students. The CPC would look at Diane’s work and conclude that the entire privatization movement is eroding local control of schools and contributing to economic inequality. There are 90+ house members and one senator… but they MIGHT get the ear of President or at the very least help get the facts about NCLB in front of their constituents.
If you have ideas on how the CDC might weigh in on the NCLB reauthorization you could write them at: progressive@mail.house.gov. At the same time, you might share your ideas with whoever represents you in Congress.
Perhap$ it is a$ $imple a$ that there i$ an inver$e relation$hip between rank on the li$t (knowledge, expertise, experience, publications, perspective etc.) and influence with the U.$. Department of Education.
Diane will never get invited to join the club. You have to talk like this:
“In the past – as columnist Tom Friedman points out – when Americans graduated from high school or college, we set out to find a job. We might hold that same job for all of our lives. But, as everyone here knows so well, those days are gone and they are never coming back.
In fact, Friedman advises students, and I quote: “You may no longer think of yourself as having a job – think of yourself as an income entrepreneur.”
Same speech, later:
“I know JD is a believer in systemic change. So am I. To quote Tom Friedman: “If you want to make big change, you need a system. A system allows ordinary people to do extraordinary things.”
She’d also have to say she focuses on OUTPUTS, not INPUTS and adopt a “tight/loose” management approach! 🙂
http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/achieving-extraordinary-through-strong-business-education-partnerships
It is not scholarship but money that influences Arne Duncan policies–a habit that stems from the early days when he was put into Chicago superintendency to do the bidding of the rich and powerful.
Joan, didn’t you just describe politics in general? It’s the money.