A teacher in New Orleans sent this letter to me. My promise to him or her: we will all use whatever tools are at our command to stop the destruction of public education and the exploitation of students to benefit corporate interests. We will not give up.
I wanted to bring to your attention the trailer for the upcoming Oprah network series about John McDonogh high school here in New Orleans.
http://www.oprah.com/common/omplayer_embed.html?article_id=41375.
It is a vicious misrepresentation of what is going on at the school- merely propaganda for the brand new charter management organization that makes our students out to be thug primitives who need taming by clean cut out of towners.
Last night, a meeting was held by a coalition of concerned citizens and organizations to discuss the stripping away of the public from our public schools and some important action steps to re-frame the narrative of New Orleans schools. Parents mentioned this very video and will be protesting a screening at the school tonight.
Meanwhile, this series plans to do exactly what the corporate reformers here have been doing all along and what those folks last night are contending with- an extreme narrative that is completely out of touch with the truth, and has troubling privatization and profit motives.
In the wake of these reforms, our schools have shut out holistic learning, critical pedagogies, whole child concerns, etc. and have become militaristic nightmares- the opposite of the safe spaces schools should provide, especially for students in the impoverished situations many of the students depicted in this program come from.
Our students feel the walls closing in on them as young white teachers (I am one of them) stand in front of their classroom telling them all they need to do to get to college is work harder so the students can be successful just like them! To put them on camera in that experience is the grossest form of exploitation I can think of.
The propaganda this show is prepared to deliver across the country is both predictable and terrifying. Narratives are powerful and the allies of privatization are winning.
We need to start an information campaign to discredit this work, as happened with “Won’t Back Down.” Your voice in that movement is of course key, and I look forward to your input and feedback.
Sincerely,
A concerned young educator in New Orleans
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oprah has been an enemy of teachers for a long time. She sells quacks for a living. Her medical advisor offers unproven miracle cures, Dr. Phil, while entertaining, isn’t exactly top shelf counseling, she panders to bullshit regularly.
To think that she is anything different than what she has shown herself to be for years and years is foolish.
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Sadly, beloved personalities like Oprah and Stephen Colbert have shown themselves to be very supportive of these charlatans.
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Curious to know what Stephen Colbert has done.
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I think the comment is referring to the time Colbert had Rhee on his show. I remember her being on is show right after leaving DC. At that time, she said she wasn’t shure what she would do next. My response? “How about going into a classroom and teaching?”
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Diane has pointed out that Jonathan Alter’s wife (he is the big charter lover and KIPP promoter – remember the hissy fit on one segment of the NBC bash public education week?) books the guests on Colbert.
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It’s just that when Stephen Colbert has interviewed Bill or Melinda Gates, Michelle Rhee and Davis Guggenheim, for example, he seems supportive of what they are peddling. At the same time, I thnk he’s very talented and I’ve loved him since he was on The Daily Show, but I am still suspicious of media personalities where public education is concerned. The same goes for Oprah.
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The red flag is the crying and sense of being overwhelmed in a classroom of students whom the young white teacher knows nothing about. You can’t connect with my struggles if you have no clue of my background or my daily struggles. Who are you to come in my house/neighborhood and chastise me? Oprah Winfrey is far removed from her community. She has so much money that she doesn’t know that her realm of reality is totally defunct of struggle or the remembrance (at least cognizant) of what it is like to struggle. She doesn’t have a clue about the daily struggle of our students or how much time it takes to become a teacher (at least 10 and we are still learning what it takes). This profession is not for the faint of heart. Oprah is no different than the other “wanna be do-gooders who do more harm than good”! Just the thoughts of an urban born and dedicated community teacher who knows and is not far removed from the realities of my students.
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Just remember, this woman also pushed “The Secret”.
She is a clown…a very rich clown, but still a clown.
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Are we sending our thinking to a particular web page? How are we taking action?
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Maybe post your thinking here too?
http://www.facebook.com/ownTV
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Here’s some background info on what’s been going on with that school http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2012/03/school_reform_legend_steve_bar.html
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Do we know anyone who knows Oprah well enough to tell her to quit?
How about we contact Matt Damon?
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Please see my comment below!
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Looks like a made for TV movie. Anyone know when this will be shown and where?
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I’ve been wondering if we shouldn’t reach out to MoveOn and ask for help. The Daily Kos and Valerie Strauss (along with Diane, obviously) have been presenting our counter-narrative for some time, yet I fear as outlets, they are seen as fringe. I would think MoveOn, with it’s broad base, could lend its PR hand to our fight. Has anyone considered how we could do this? Is there anyone in our community with national PR experience to begin this work? As we all know, the corporate reformers have marketing/PR departments. How could we fundraise to create one for ourselves?
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MoveOn is pretty hooked on Obama. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for them to jump aboard.
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Someday this episde and the Rhee segments will just be another James Frey episode for Oprah…a million little pieces over and over…..a whole new series on her network. I just need a catchy title…hmmmm?
It takes longer for those anoited the godess of all to catch on to what the peons already know.
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It’s “Waiting for Superman” all over again, the billionaire’s favorite solution, a tough black man(or another minority face like Michelle Rhee) to play sheriff, somebody like Geoff Canada coming in to restore order like he did in Harlem when he expelled his entire 8th grade cohort b/c they weren’t high achieving enough to make his spanking new wall st-financed $20-mil HS look good, only this time we’re in NOLA. The propaganda is the same–dark-skinned kids are portrayed as criminally out of control and something drastic must be done to raise their test scores(which is synonymous with guaranteeing them success in their future). Decades of neglect and low wages and unemployment and highest child pov rate in every urban center become invisible. It’s all about testing, scores…with no hint that such charter operations get control of school money and school bldgs and have not achieved higher results than similar public schls for the most part(83% similar or less than pub schls)…Oprah and Cory Booker and Geoff Canada and Barack Obama are the most powerful assets now for the billionaire boys club b/c they allow the white billionaires to pretend this is being done for black folks.
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I am from New Orleans and I heard that this show was coming. I didn’t realize what it was all about. I am completly apalled by the exploitation of these children just to promote the reform agenda, and I am suprised that the parents are allowing it. If some sort of an organization is put together I will do what ever I can to help get the word out. Stuff envelopes, go door to door.
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kbundsen–Please make sure to read my 6:05 PM comment below!
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How does this show benefit the children? Does it in anyway benefit the children who go there?
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Oprah is not going to “quit.” She is the primary person who is responsible for promoting Rhee and the Waiting for Superman propaganda, and for greenlighting the bashing of teachers and bringing that to the national stage.
I think Oprah is entrenched in the magical thinking mindset of “The Secret,” which really boils down to blaming the victim for putting out negative vibes that supposedly invite failure and tragedy. (Honestly, I’ve been so desperate trying to find a job with a livable wage, for the past five years, that I have tried the positive thinking approach many times, too, but that has not altered the job market –which is actually getting worse in my field, as employers are now cutting back hours in order to avoid having to pay for ObamaCare –affecting college professors as well as retail workers at places like Wendy’s and Taco Bell: http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/14/colleges-roll-back-faculty-hours-in-response-to-obamacare/
Oprah also supports right-wingers just as Rhee and other corporate education “reformers” do. (Anyone catch her interview with Chris Christie?)
I never understood why Oprah didn’t do what she hailed Tom Shadyack for doing, which was basically saying that he had succeeded and now he has enough money and stuff. Hard to not think of greed and power…
I don’t really know what Oprah’s problem is, but my guess is that she has fallen for the TFA propaganda. I’ve heard her say that she thinks she is a teacher. She has no training in education, and she does not need to know anything about her individual “students,” nor does she have to work with the same ones each day, so the TV gig is nothing like classroom teaching, IMHO.
Sadly, Oprah is probably one of the best examples of how money and fame can distance people from their roots and color their thinking.
Just imagine what might have happened if Oprah had invested in promoting jobs programs and campaigned for livable wages for the Working Poor, starting in Chicago. Instead, she got behind the business model of the corporate education “reform” movement, which has been tearing communities apart from the closure of neighborhood schools and resulted in increased violence, due to forcing kids to cross rival gang turf to attend schools in other areas.
Instead of promoting a newly established New Orleans charter school that has yet to prove itself, if only Oprahs’ eyes would see what has really been happening, with only 17% of charter schools demonstrating improvement, 37% preforming worse, and 46% performing the same as neighborhood public schools: http://www.educationjustice.org/newsletters/nlej_iss21_art5_detail_CharterSchoolAchievement.htm
But nothing is going to change as long as Oprah continues to believe in secret magic bullets.
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Maybe a new show on her network could be titled: The
Education of Oprah…everything she thinks she knows but clearly does not.
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Diane, could I get your ok to send this thread to HARPO?
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Yes, please do send the thread to HARPO.
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Who or what is HARPO? When I think of Harpo I think of the Marx Brothers movies.
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HARPO is the name of Ophrah’s production company. It is Oprah spelled backwards.
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Thanks, Diane. I don’t do TV generally so I am a tad ignorant in these things.
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Picketing Oprah for misrepresenting pub schl needs is a good idea. She is a media untouchable b/c of her humble start and spectacular stardom and wealth, which give her the right to say anything about anything and be patronised as a prophet and pundit. This right of the oligarch to run the world requires no expertise, as the white billionaires Gates, Bloomberg, Broad, Zuckerberg, and Walton show, dictating rheeform in education with never teaching in school. Oprah invested $40 mil or so to set up a pvt residential girls prep schl in South Africa, able to admit only a tiny fraction of all the poor deserving girls who qualified for admission, much like scholarships to our own prep schls or the pvt. charters swallowing pub schls–highly selective, over-funded, under-regulated, no answer to the vast inequality and poverty afoot generally, esp in still unequal South Africa. This is how the 1% behave, announcing and pronouncing from the castle what folks in the shops and farms should do, be and have. Picket Oprah and her cronies Cory Booker, Chris Christie, Steve Zuckerberg, Geoff Canada, let me know, I’ll join in.
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Excellent points, thanks!
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To Oprah’s credit, she did foot the bill and pay for the college educations of hundreds of African American men attending Morehouse College.
(Not sure about her support for women, beyond establishing the girls’ school in South Africa.)
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I think this Speak Out Op-Ed by Moira Bradford “gets it” when she sees much of the problem with education–including those corporate/privatized charters– lies in the goal to standardize, classify, and impose arbitrary rules and regulations in schools in order to control youth and force compliance.
The School to Prison Pipeline: School Reform as a Civil Rights Issue
http://truth-out.org/speakout/item/13912-the-school-to-prison-pipeline-school-reform-as-a-civil-rights-issue
I know if I were a student in this era of reform, forced to sit through some of the things that kids are forced to sit through today, I would be a major behavior problem too!
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Tonight Save Our Schools is having a webinar-fundraiser in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is all about exactly what is happening to our schools and to our children of color. Participants are Jitu Brown, Zakiyah Ansari and Karran Harper Royal.
Ms. Harper Royal, as you may recall, ran for Orleans Parish School Board and lost, because she is an avid supporter of public schools. She is also a co-founder of the powerful coalition Parents Across America. Perhaps those of you in New Orleans (like kbundsen, geauxteacher and others) can enlist Ms. Harper Royal to speak to Oprah? And then, perhaps, she can enlist others, as well? I believe she had been named on the Education Hero Honor Roll by Diane, and I would think that, of all people, she would be able to educate Oprah.
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I have always had much respect for Oprah. My hope, as she is made aware of her role in this dialogue, her choices are reexamined. Sometimes, it is easy to be misdirected and unaware, especially if information is presented without opposing views. I hope she takes the time to read the letters written by teachers to President Obama in The Campaign to Save Public Schools. I hope she follows this blog and hears the stories of real teachers facing a demoralizing corporate intrusion in education. I do believe she respects teachers and education, and it is my hope she remembers and honors those teachers who made a difference in her life. Oprah has the ability to be a powerful advocate for public education, if she chooses wisely.
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For Oprah and anyone else who might really care about children but doesn’t understand what has been happening to public education across the country, there are many resources on this blog and at other places online, but please also see the following:
Glen Ford’s cogent summary on YouTube, “The Corporate Assault on Public Education” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdPACwRgw04
Bill Moyers, The United States of ALEC (Rhee’s StudentsFirst mirrors ALEC’s agenda and practices): http://billmoyers.com/episode/encore-united-states-of-alec/
Mark Pocan joined ALEC and verifies their agenda to dismantle public education “drip by drip”: http://open.salon.com/blog/steve_klingaman/2012/05/31/alec_dismantling_public_education_drip_by_drip
AlecExposed: http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed
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African American journalist Glen Ford’s, “The Corporate Assault on Public Education” mentioned above is incredibly alarming and I strongly recommend that all watch. I did not know that ultra-conservative Republicans had purposely infiltrated the Democratic party, with the support of the Bradley Foundation, Manhattan Institute, the Heritage Foundation, etc., a la Cory Booker et al, but that explains a whole lot about what’s been happening to the party and education.
Here’s another Glen Ford must watch, “Resisting the Corporate Education Agenda”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkFjlfWwAtI
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Oprah sold her soul years ago. She is definitely part of the problem not part of the solution when it comes to education. She has a huge blind spot that colors her ability to think rationally because of her belief that ‘god’ must certainly agree with almost everything she thinks. After all, she has stated publicaly that he personally made her a wealthy and influential person. Why would he do that if she wasn’t right about most things? I haven’t listened to her for more than a decade now. She doesn’t have the influence with women she had ten years ago but she does have a great deal of wealth which gives her political power.
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oops, :/….. publicly
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Here’s a thought instead of crying and trying to prevent all efforts at reform be they through privitization, charters, school choice, online classes find a way to embrace the new thinking and influence the process directly from the inside. Your all so reactionary and afraid of even discussing reforms or of competing models to public education that you do damage to the cause you support. Don’t cry because you face competition, go out and prove your better or shut up. Period. If you represent a better value and produce better results then eventually the efforts to reform may look a lot less threatening to your careers and please please please stop pretending its all about the kids. It’s aboit your jobs, your benefits, your summers off and your pensions and then its about the kids. Pretending otherwise just doesn’t pass the smell test and that is why your losing ground. Think long term as opposed to wallowing in each percieved insult and each fresh attempt to tesařík the educational process. In short lots and lots of people think education should be an all of the above approach and reform wouldn’t even be discussed if you were all doing such a fantastic job in the first place.
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Nonsense
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To borrow Rachel Maddow’s phrase… Bull-pucky Ms. T.
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Sounds like someone who has been drinking the corporate “reform” Kool-Aid, such as someone from TFA or TNTP, not a “frustrated teacher” with years of experience –who would be much less likely to repeatedly use “your” incorrectly, when it should be “you’re.”
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