John White wrote a letter to the editor to defend his record and praise the sweeping, bold, innovative reforms that he has led.
Mercedes Schneider subjected White’s letter to a severe fact check and found it deficient, especially in relation to basic accuracy.
She cuffs him about the head and says:
“Reformers like White thrive on promoting the false dichotomy that “disagreeing with me” equals “a return to the old days.” Another reformer false idea is that everything about the past ways of functioning is “bad” and the “bold, new, sweeping reforms” are automatically “good.” Not so. Critically-thinking individuals consider what works, whether from past or present. It is a shame that I find myself having to defend such a basic idea.
“You are the one playing the game, John White. You write a letter thinking that people will divorce your words from your previous deceptive behavior. You think that the public does not read the other pages in the newspaper, including the pages on your voucher program failure and fraud. You fail to realize that your distorted words only provide fodder for more blog postings for the likes of me. Rest assured, people will read this and share it in other social media settings. They will see you once again as the deceiver that you are. They will once again see through the emptiness of your words.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, I am convinced that the people who are moving ahead through their own lies and
distortion of Truth have come to believe themselves. What liar is the best is the one who totally lives in denial and can convince a lie detector that they are not telling lies. They believe what they are doing is patriotic and necessary. The question is who will benefit?
Follow the money!
ronee groff: I agree with you. Read the text of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s recent harsh scolding of the attendees at the 2013 AERA [American Educational Research Association] meeting. His point? That THEY are to blame for HIS relentless ratcheting up of high-stakes standardized testing. One of those old Greek guys described him and the other leading charterites/privatizers perfectly:
“A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” [Demosthenes]
That is why this blog has such impact. They can’t stand folks like you pointing out the difference between the talk and the walk.
Thank you for your postings.
🙂
This brings up the interesting question of what disagreeing with the changes in education that are going on today does mean.
If the majority of posters here could determine public school policy, what would schools and school districts look like?
I have a request – Everyone who reads Mercedes’ blog or this post by Diane – please forward to John White with your location. He needs to know the extent of his exposure. Ask him a short question. He will probably start responding and then realize the numbers. He has never failed to respond quickly to my emails. Let’s see.
John.white@la.gov
An interesting game, Lee. 🙂
The non-educational reformers that are deforming the school systems across the country, are the same individuals that are creating massive changes within the public school system, but their children attend private/parochial schools. If this movement was in the best interest of the children suffering in failing schools, the reformers would not approach the issue from a grandstanding method, and provide true measures to reform the system, and include the community, teachers, and parents in the reform. Throwing money to corporate America, and bringing in uncertified/untrained teachers are not the solutions. It’s very imperative that the reformers understand that the system has been broken for years, and that they cannot rebuild the system with one sided monolith practices that they deem are suitable.