Jersey Jazzman hits it out of the park again.
You must watch the video. It is priceless.
The spokesman for the New Jersey hedge fund managers says it is time to get the experts out of the way and let people who know nothing whatever about education take charge. This is what as known today as “reform.” People who actually know something about education are called “defenders of the status quo.”
The experts’ time has come and gone, he says.
Now it is time to bring in the inexpert.
There was once a political party that proudly called itself the Know-Nothing Party.
Now we have a school reform movement that makes a virtue of knowing nothing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Derrell Bradford is a total SCHMUCK.
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When Is Incompetence a Virtue? It falls somewhere between “Ignorance is bliss” and “Follow the money.” Pick your poison.
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Good one!
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Why don’t we do the same thing for banking and finance reform?
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Because they are the puppeteers.
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True, but only for so long as we let them.
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Jazzman is rockin it again! I can’t believe we live in a world where this mess is tolerated. A nightlife writer=education expert/reformer/spokesperson.
Now, we truly live in a bizarre world where a billionaire computer nerd dictates education policy, screws it up and then decides to fund collaboration compacts designed to ease tension between charters and public schools.
Gates funds to reduce tension between public schools and charters
7 cities split $25M in education funds from Gates Foundation
http://news.msn.com/us/7-cities-split-dollar25m-in-education-funds-from-gates-foundation
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“Defenders of the status quo.” The irony of this accusation is always bitterly amusing.
Since NCLB and its various iterations have been around for a decade or more, isn’t the “reform” agenda actually the status quo?
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Puts me in mind of those who run for public office hating government.
They carry on and on about how awful government is, how it never works, stifles everything, etc. And yet they have held office for years and are, in fact, themselves, the government.
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This is all a reflection of the anti-intellectualism rampant in our society (and others) trickling into schools. See who runs NYCDOE or DEPR – mba, 2 year TFA grads with barely an MA under their belt, lawyers. Its incredible the level of ignorance on the part of many of the leaders in education today. I had a superintendent who was anumerical – couldn’t understand data or simple statistics – and she wanted to drive the data driven obsession (of which she understood nothing) down our throats. Objections to problems with data quality, instrument validation, outcomes stability, etc were dismissed (in no small part, I suspect, because they do not understand the numbers themselves). It’s a disaster. In PR millions of SIG funds are being spent on completely invalid, poorly constructed, out-of-the-hat kinds of instruments and school intervention models, chosen by people who have never run a school or even taught (much less received any formal training in education). All because its either that or you don’t get the SIG $. The barbarians are in charge!
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This is one of the scariest videos I have ever seen! I see a power hungry lobbyist who know nothing about education and everything about pushing an agenda. The part about choice being the easiest thing to push because the actual numerical results are not sexy enough to sell is particularly telling. He sells an easy fix and to hell with actual results. I admit I almost turned it off after his description of reform 1.0 where teachers can say anything they want. I am not sure which made me more angry: the idea that teachers are not experts or the truth that teachers have never really been in charge of education at all!
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There is actually a book out on this topic: Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of The Free. I plan to read it over the winter break.
Charles P. Pierce Talks With BuzzFlash About How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free: Idiot America. It’s Deadly
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/7323-charles-p-pierce-talks-with-buzzflash-about-how-stupidity-became-a-virtue-in-the-land-of-the-free-idiot-america-its-deadly
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This approach has worked very well in corporate America and they can’t think of any reason it shouldn’t work in education. People who run car companies know nothing about making cars, people who run airlines know nothing about flying planes, people who run food manufacturing companies know nothing about cooking. Since everything became financialized in the 80s, it no longer matters what your company used to do to earn a living. Now only the numbers matter. The little people will take care of the actual production. If they don’t do it cheaply enough to fit into the financial model, they will be replaced by even littler people.
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You have said something very important here. As money moves in, all that matters is how much money can be sucked out. Maybe since efficiency requires that most everything be produced in a third world slave shop, they have moved on to the public sector. Medicine has had the “benefit” of the free market expertize. Now it’s our turn.
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I think it is about time for the hedge fund managers to move aside and let me take a crack at whatever it is they do. I’m sure that with absolutely no training in or understanding of hedge fund managing, I will be a whole lot better at it than they are. I doubt they’d agree and wouldn’t want to put too much money on the line to test it.
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Can I join you??
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Jersey Jazzman, Derrell Bradford
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/12/triumph-of-incompetent.html Tuesday, December 4, 2012 Triumph Of the Incompetent New Jersey teacher Marie Corfield, who dared to stand up for teachers and parents, had over $100,000 “dropped on her head” this past fall when she ran for the state Assembly. The dropper was none other than B4K, a super-PAC powered by hedge fund money and run by a professional schmoozer of the rich, Derrell Bradford.
Considering the money B4K spent to buy the defeat of Corfield, I think it’s worth going back and giving a listen to what these guys are all about. To paraphrase Bradford : “The problem with our country today is that *we spend too much time listening to the opinions of people who know what they are talking about*!”
“*1.0 is an era that is like a hundred years long. Where only the sort of like – you know, Rick mentioned earlier – only the sort of experts, only the accredited, all those people, those are the only people who are sort of allowed to talk about schools, right?*”
Of course, unaccredited non-expertshave been talking about what’s wrong with schools since forever. But let’s put Bradford’s ignorant version of history aside…
*Does Derrell Bradford really think it’s so great that people who have no expertise in education now get to dominate the debate?* * * Derrell himself is spectacularly ill-qualifiedto voice an opinion about anything having to do with schools. He has never taught, never been a principal, holds no degrees in education, has done no serious work in education policy, has never written a peer-reviewed paper on education, and holds no degrees in psychology, human development, sociology, pediatrics, or public policy.
Bradford has admittedthat he only came into education “reform” because he needed a job (it’s obvious who is referred to in the linked post ). His previous experience before entering the reformy world was writing for a nightlife magazine.
Yet this man served, at the request of Gov. Chris Christie, on the NJ Educator Effectiveness Task Force- *a panel with only one working teacher*. This group put out a reportthat proposed using “growth” – which the NJDOE has implemented as “Student Growth Percentiles” – to determine teacher effectiveness. Had Derrell had any experience or training in the field, he would have known that the “inventor” of SGPs, Damien Betebenner – who is cited in the report – has said explicitlythat SGPs do not attempt to find teacher effect (or any other cause) for variations in student test scores. In other words, they are the wrong instrumentsto use when attempting to infer a teacher’s “value.”
I can’t think of a better example of someone who has no idea what they are doing promoting a policy that is detrimental to the children and teachers of New Jersey *out of sheer ignorance*. Of course, Bradford also stays up at night waiting for the Merit Pay Fairy; he’s never met a reformy policy he didn’t love, no matter the evidence against it.
Bradford was also a secret reviewerof charter school applications early in the Christie administration. Again, he was completely unqualified for this task; I can only hope someone competent checked over his work before anyone acted on it.
So Derrell doesn’t have experience or education or training or research or the facts or logicon his side. But that’s OK: in this world, there’s really only one thing that counts:
“*When you start showing up and saying, “Listen, we’re gonna drop $100,000 on your head if you don’t get behind this thing,” it’s a very different coversation about reform at the legislative level.*”
*Why worry about being competent when you’re loaded?*
*David Tepper consults with Derrell Bradford (artist’s conception)*
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What an idiot. And yet people listen to this man. At some point people will become aware that the emperor has no clothes. Right? RIGHT?
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