Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler is a watchdog of American journalism.
He regularly criticizes the media, and is especially good when he looks at education. He recently dissected the misleading and overly negative coverage of international tests.
In the past few days, he has been on a roll. He was incensed by the Washington Post‘s fawning coverage of our greatest “education celebrity.” Over the past weekend, trying to immunize Rhee from the renewed uproar about cheating, The Washington Post ran a long article about Rhee’s celebrity, an editorial defending her, and an opinion piece by her admiring biographer.
Here are a few choice comments by Somerby: “A true journalistic disgrace: Over the weekend, the Washington Post was at it again. It was doing the thing the Post does best. The Washington Post was peddling Rhee. This newspaper simply won’t stop.”
And this: “…she’s the dream girl of the world’s billionaires—and the Washington Post won’t stop peddling.”
Read The Daily Howler pieces here, here and here.
A word about the Washington Post. It continues to run Valerie Strauss’s invaluable blog, which has provided a voice and a platform for critics of corporate reform, including critics of Rhee. And an editor there invited me to review Richard Whitmire’s biography of Rhee. That said, the newspaper’s editorial board has been Rhee’s most unflinching defender and whatever she does and says.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Could it have something to do with the fact that (as I recall) the Post garners most of its profits from for-profit education? (Kaplan schools)
Michael, the conflict of interest is much more direct than you imagine. During the whole time the Post was pushing Rhee, its subsidiary (Kaplan Learning K-12) was selling proprietary curriculum and doing other direct business with the DC publlic schools. In 2011, they sold that operation, including their virtual charters, to K12 Inc. Their own brand is toxic, but they advertised they could install stealth for-profit operations “with the look and feel of a district charter”, and split their take with their co-conspirators in the districts.
If you can’t believe it:
“HERNDON, Va., May 19, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ —
K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN), the largest provider of proprietary curriculum and online school programs for students in kindergarten through high school in the U.S., announced today an agreement to purchase the credit-bearing K-12 assets of Kaplan Virtual Education (KVE), a subsidiary of Kaplan, Inc. In partnership with school districts and charter schools, KVE operates online public schools in eight states for students in grades 6-12 and also operates online private schools serving similar grades.”
http://investors.k12.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=214389&p=irol-newsarticle&id=1565568
Makes my blood boil. One of Kaplan’s founders was Michael Milken, the “Junk Bond” king and convicted felon from that episode. He sure knows how to make a buck at other’s expense. First it was from people’s saving and now it is from tax-payer dollars for education privatization. I didn’t know convicted felons stealing tax-payer dollars could be described as philanthropists!
Milken was a cofounder of K12, as far as I know, rather than Kaplan. I’ve always thought the Milken Family Foundation was a model for the Gates Foundation. Check out this tax-deductable business asset:
http://www.mff.org/about/about.taf
I “misspoke”. Milken was a co-founder of K12, not Kaplan. Point is that K12 is huge and profiting at the expense of public education
He built a spectacular ritzy private Jewish high school near my in-laws’ in L.A. It rejected a young relative of mine (who was attending the feeder K-8 school) for being dyslexic.
Michael Brocoum, you beat me too it. The Kaplan connection also influences their coverage of for-profit higher ed.
And the thing that incenses me to no end is, they never ever acknowledge in their stories or editorials that a conflict of interest exists. I’ve written to their Ombudsman, no answer. I’ve commented on numerous editorials, no change. So much for their own standards.
An interesting twist, though, was that USA Today did the original expose on suspected cheating in D.C. schools during Rhee’s reign, and the editor on the investigative series was the wife of Jay Mathews, the Post’s longtime education reporter, a good-natured admirer of most things “reform.” He certainly supported his wife’s series, so that has to have changed his tune quite a bit. He is to KIPP what Richard Whitmire is to Rhee (admirer and biographer whose fortunes are improved by widespread admiration of the subject), but he has to have pretty different views on Rhee now.
Caroline, after the Kaplan expose hit in 2010, I sent Mathews information on the Kaplan K12 business with public districts, including DC. He swore he had no idea of that aspect of their business. I challenged him to disclose it, and he invited me to write a guest blog instead. I did, with his full cooperation. I have about forty emails back and forth, ending up here:
“On Mon, 10/11/10, Jay Mathews wrote:
“From: Jay Mathews
Subject: Fw: Re: Will you run it?
To: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Date: Monday, October 11, 2010, 1:11 PM”
“I am putting it together and seeking permission. I did not want to hit my editor or lawyers so soon after the CHEC checks, which meant a lot of work for them. This version seems pretty clear, but it may be too long for them. I am going to send you a shortened version to see if it does the job. They will decide, not me. –jay”
The Post editors decided not to run it, of course, and Jay went along. He has known the game since 2010. i think his attempt to expose Rhee was an effort to save his own soul, or reputation at least. I wish him luck with both, but don’t recommend that anybody put too much trust in him.
Well, this is in keeping with my observation (and I’ve communicated quite a bit with Jay over the years) that he deals with the crooks and scoundrels in ed “reform” by whistling and “staring into air,” as the Daily Howler would put it. He truly doesn’t or refuses to recognize that they’re there and what they’re doing. It’s presumably a personality trait. So he dealt with his employer’s ethics issues in the same way — “didn’t” “notice” them, and then shrugged “oh well” when they couldn’t be denied. But it was his wife’s expose of the cheating scandal, not his, and that was something he couldn’t deny, out of respect, love, loyalty etc.. (Hi Jay, if you’re reading this, as you probably are.)
Here’s an example of a 2007 Kaplan contract with the public school district in Manatee, FL. for $4,620,000.
Click to access Kaplan%20Contract.pdf
This is what bothered me most about Layton’s piece on Rhee; she wrote how Rhee believes in ” evaluating teachers based in part on how well their students perform,” leaving out that her evaluation system, IMPACT, was based 50% on the one year’s gains in test scores of the teacher’s students. I think everyone believes that teachers should be evaluated in part on how much their students learn, but according to many experts, changes in student annual test scores from year to year are nearly random; and requiring this as Rhee did almost forces principals and teachers to cheat.
Leonie,
Count me as not one of “everyone believes that teachers should be evaluated in part on HOW MUCH students learn.” The “how much” implies that one can quantify the teaching and learning process. That is a logical fallacy as the teaching and learning process comes under the category of the quality of interaction between teachers and students. It is logically impossible to “quantify” a “quality” as a quantity can be considered a subset of quality and therefore cannot be used to “evaluate” the overarching “quality”.
By the way, thanks for all the work you are doing to combat the insanity that is the current edudeformers modus operandi.
It is too bad that you failed to mention Jay Matthews and his coverage of education issues around DC and the nation in the Washington Post. He runs rings around Ms. Strauss, and he actually engages, digs deeps, and follows up in his reporting, where as Ms. Strauss seems to just post the works of others.
Yes, Jay Matthews runs rings around everyone on the planet. And manages to get more than half of what he writes quite badly wrong.
He’s fallen for more myths about super teachers, super schools, and super baloney than Valerie Strauss would if she spent the next century. But her role with the post is dramatically different from Matthews’; suggesting that the reason she isn’t Jay Matthews is because she’s somehow not on his level is one of the more ignorant (or disingenuous) comments I’ve seen here.
If Ms. Strauss’ role is to repost and reword the works of others, she does indeed do a fantastic.
She often reports the work of other writers and often writes her own pieces as well.
What is your beef with Strauss?
Evidently she doesn’t support the “education reform community” and she suggests other points of view….I suppose they are to have a monopoly on all things education. Shameful!
Valerie Strauss both writes her own reports and commentaries and posts others’ commentaries. That’s her job description. Attacking her for it is not valid; it’s the design of her blog.
Matthews is a really nice man who is too kind and gentle to ask tough questions or to believe that anyone would try to deceive or confuse.
Go to the Dailyhowler.com (the old Daily Howler) site and Search for Jay Mathews.
For example:
http://tinyurl.com/auenty8
Jay does not always dig deep.
It’s not just the U.S.! The following is from a friend in England — a fantastic veteran teacher I worked with years ago:
I’m finally facing retirement, after 40 years teaching, and . . . don’t want to. I still love
teaching and enjoy being with young people, but am absolutely miserable with the
verbal beatings and pressures teachers are harassed with now, what with ‘Higher
Targets! Skills! Testing! Meetings! Assessments! Publishing Grades!’ Whatever
happened to allowing kids to be kids and have joyful childhoods? Sometimes I feel
the government is trying to squeeze every bit of joy and creativity out of our children.
Teachers’ pay has been frozen for several years now, but Parliament is considering
giving themselves a 25% pay hike this week.
85% of the revenue for the Washington Post does not come from publishing but their private university which is one of the worst in the U.S. for abusing the federal government and the students. They are privatizers and corporatizers so what else would you expect? We do not have a free press anymore since Bill Clinton signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act. We are now feeling the results of that in the trash reporting of news in the U.S. When I want real news I go to Russia Today or Al Jazeera. If you understand spanish their stations show much more than the english stations.
George,
Any particular Spanish stations/site that you would recommend?
Gracias,
Duane
It’s possible that union animus is at least partly responsible for the WaPo’s support for the Rheeform agenda.
WaPo editorials frequently attack public employee unions in Montgomery County (a Maryland suburb), particularly the Montgomery County teachers union. The number and intensity of these anti-union editorials is way out of proportion to the newsworthiness of the underlying issues, particularly for a newspaper whose editorials must routinely address the major national and international issues. By contrast, the WaPo editiorials rarely, if ever, discuss public employee issues in the Virginia suburbs (where state law effectively prohibits collective bargaining by public employees). If the WaPo was extremely sensitive to public employee and/or public school issues (as opposed to union issues), one would expect to see WaPo editorials addressing these issues in the Virginia suburbs with the same frequency as in the Maryland suburbs.
The WaPo’s union animus probably springs from a series of very bitter disputes the WaPo had with its printing unions back in the 1970s or, less likely, from several less-acrimonious disputes with its newsroom unions in the 1990s. In any event, the WaPo editorials are uniformly anti-union — an unusual record for a newspaper that, on most other issues, is fairly liberal. (I make these observations as a labor attorney with 30+ years experience in the DC area representing govt and management, never unions or employees).
This is so true! I have noticed the same thing about the Post’s scathing coverage of Montgomery County Public Schools & its Superintendent Joshua Starr versus its lack of scrutiny in regard to the Northern Virginia suburban schools. The bias is so obvious – the editorial board doesn’t even try to hide it. What it fail ls to mention in its numerous anti-Montgomery County Public School editorials is that MCPS has one of the best educational systems in the nation. You’d think that a newspaper obsessed with all things Rhee & the data crunchers would be impressed by MCPS’s stellar standardized test results which easily outshine its Northern Virginia neighbors. I for one am sick of the Post’s bias.
Looking over the comments, I’m not sure many people actually grasped this. Forgive me, I’m going to shout:
KAPLAN EDUCATION IS A WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF THE WASHINGTON POST CORPORATION. IT’S THEIR CASH COW, BUT PROFITS ARE DOWN.
ITS ONLINE “COLLEGE” WAS CAUGHT CHEATING VETERANS AND TARGETING WELFARE MOMS WITH A “FEAR AND DOUBT” MARKETING STRATEGY. IT ALSO OWNS A FOR-PROFIT EDUCATION REFORM BRANCH, AND HAS NEVER DISCLOSED THAT CONFLICT IN ANY STORY OR EDITORIAL.
Sorry. Please, oh please. Open the links above to see why they’ve supported education “reform” all this time.
I will. Thank you. Your efforts are appreciated. Seriously!
Maybe the Washington Post is now owned by Kaplan?
Eber, vete!
Your opinion is important to us. Please write again!
Witty, humorous…once again…what a catch!
You do make the most interesting and diverse points. Your willingness to back up your claims with fact is unsurpassed.
Thank you for your fresh ideas and links to previously unknown data.
Wasn’t Melinda Gates embroiled in a scandal involving the Kaplan college program?
The lengths to which these individuals who are millionaires/billionaires will go to exploit people for a profit is absolutely perverse. I know Diane is probably averse to doing so but I would LOVE to see her ambush Rhee at an event where she is shilling her fiction and fraud in the form of a biography.
Location: Rhee book tour speaking engagement.
Host: Yes, you in the back with the hooded sweatshirt. Do you have a question for Ms. Rhee?
Camouflage Ravitch- Oh, I have several!