Paul Thomas writes here about NPR’s whitewash of disaster capitalism in New Orleans. Without reference to the extensive debunking of “the New Orleans miracle” by Mercedes Schneider, Research on Reforms (Dr. Barbara Ferguson and CharlesHatfield), and others, NPR recycles the glories of closing public schools, opening privately managed charters, eliminating the union, firing thousands of veteran teachers (in this case, the core of the city’s black middle class), and replacing them with inexperienced Teach for America recruits, most of whom would leave after two or three years.
Here is the trick by which radio and TV shows give the illusion of balance: first, they give the narrative, then they invite two or three people to make a critical comment. What they are selling is the narrative. The critics are easily brushed aside. At times like this, I remember that NPR gets funding from both Gates and the far-right Walton Family Foundation, which is devoted to privatizing public schools.
Thomas calls out NPR for playing this trick:
“Framed as “remarkable changes,” erasing public schools and firing all public school faculty (a significant percentage of the black middle class in New Orleans) are whitewashed beneath a masking narrative embracing all things market forces as essentially good, even though the actions taken against pubic schools and teachers in the name of the mostly minority and disproportionately impoverished families and children of New Orleans have not accomplished what advocates claim.
“In the NPR piece, “no teaching experience” is passed over as if this couldn’t possibly be a problem; however, when public schools were dismantled and all the faculty fired, the second disaster swept over New Orleans in the form of “no excuses” charter schools (KIPP and their cousins) and a swarm of Teach For America recruits who were not native to New Orleans and have lived lives mostly unlike the children they teach.
“As well, that black and poor children are “part of an experiment” remains unexamined in this piece. Instead, the entire New Orleans experiment is called “kind of a miracle.”
“At 5 minutes in, NPR allows a critic to call claims of success “overblown,” and then 7 minutes in, one disgruntled parent announces that charter advocates “won’t be able to fool me this time.” But overall, this NPR whitewashing of the New Orleans education reform experiment fails as most education journalism does—absent as it is any real critical questions, absent as it is any effort to honor the weight of evidence in the pursuit of “balance.”
“I find here the exact same pattern I confronted in my criticism of the NPR “grit” piece. While the 8-plus minutes do technically include “both sides,” the less credible position (pro- charter, pro-market forces) is clearly given the greater weight while the stronger position is posed as mere “criticism.”
“Education reform in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina is a model of disaster capitalism and an ugly lesson in how we should not reform public education.”
As it happens, I am in the midst of reading a new book, Kristen Buras’ “Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space,” that lays waste to every part of the alleged New Orleans’ “miracle.” It is a gripping study. By the time Buras is done, the reformers are stripped bare in the public square as yet another wave of white supremacists, in this case arrived in New Orleans to turn black children into a profitable “product.” I wonder if NPR will interview Buras?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Given the overwhelming class and racial differences between the student population in New Orleans and the TFA colonizers/privatizers/gentrifiers who have flocked there, “whitewashing” is both figuratively and literally true.
This is more evidence of what Chris Hedges calls “The Death of the Liberal Class,” in which institutions, in this case NPR, that formerly exposed or mitigated the worst excesses of capitalism, have become willing captives of it, acting as stenographers, echo chambers and loudspeakers for the mis/disinformation of their Overclass patrons.
Here in New York, even colleagues of mine who should know better are snowed by the local NPR affiliate’s constant and years-long enabling of the privatization agenda, unable to see what is happening before their eyes and being done to them.
I fear that NPR is beginning to feel the weight of the contributions from big money contributions. They are becoming more and more supportive of the far right.
” They are becoming more and more. . .
They’ve been “becoming more and more. . . ” since the early 00’s when they were a shill for illegal wars of aggression this country initiated in Iraq and Afghanistan. I started calling them National Pentagon Radio back then. They’ve known who butters their bread for a long time now.
“Selling the narrative” is also an apt way to describe the Times’s puff piece on Moskowitz in this coming Sunday’s magazine section. A well-constructed story that simply ignores or downplays the controversy. It’s a puff piece that reminds me quite a bit of a similar piece the Times did on Anthony Weiner and his wife before Weiner launched his mayoral campaign.
I didn’t know the extent of the funding it took to privatize New Orleans schools, so the funding part was really interesting to me.
44 million in federal funds dedicated exclusively to charter schools in one year and then this:
The changes made thus far rode in on a wave of outside funds. At the peak, in the 2007-2008 school year, New Orleans schools spent $15,557 per pupil — 56 percent more than the state average.
I know it’s a counterfactual but I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if they had invested in the public schools that existed when they arrived after the hurricane.
The charter funding story is under-covered, IMO. I’d like to see a state to state comparison, for example, of the per pupil funding for charter schools in say Massachusetts with those in Ohio.
We need complete transparency on how much private money is going into these schools. You can’t do a per pupil comparison charter to public if you don’t have the (real) per pupil funding number. How much is Success Academy ACTUALLY spending per pupil? Not the public subsidy portion. The cost per pupil.
Someone who understood funding and costs could really dive into charter v public and make a valid comparison of “bang for buck” but we’re not getting anything close to that, because the private funding stream is opaque and older systems (like public school systems) have costs that aren’t part (yet!) of newer systems (like charter school systems).
Just on the simplest measures we don’t get valid comparisons. if your entire staff is younger than say, 30, your salary and health care costs are lower. But people don’t remain “younger than 30”. Some people will stay and they will be paid more over time and they will have higher healthcare costs.
You can’t really compare an older system to a newer system unless you adjust for that. The newer system will have higher costs as time goes on, unless they keep the high turnover rates for staff, and turnover itself costs.
I have yet to see what I consider a valid comparison of costs between the two systems in a given area. I don’t think anyone outside of education would accept these cost comparisons. How much are they actually spending per pupil and how do the baked-in differences between the two systems affect that? We need a much more sophisticated funding/spending/cost analysis to COMPARE, if that’s what we want to do.
“Faux/Fox balance” is NPR’s stock and trade.
For a piece on the shape of the world, NPR would travel to the ends of the earth to hunt down a single person who says the world is flat just to “balance” against the scientist (any scientist) who says it is not.
And slanting stories for underwriters is hardly unusual for NPR.
A few years back NPR ran a series on the wonders of fracking while they were getting “underwriting’ money from America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA). In fact, on the web page where they had the transcript for the piece, they were actually running ANGA’s ‘ad’.
The now defunct blog NPRCheck (among others) pointed out the conflict but NPR’s ombudsman at the time (Alicia Shepard) claimed there was only an ‘appearance” of conflict. Shepard,by the way, is also the one who defended NPR’s refusal to call waterboarding what it is: torture.
If NPR ever was an independent news source as they pretend, it was long long ago in a galaxy far far away.
It just occurred to me after i posted that NPR wouldn’t even have to travel to the ends of the earth to find someone who claims “the world is flat”. They could just call up NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
This “reporting style” of NPR and PBS was richly mocked by Alexander Cockburn in Harper’s Magazine in 1982 in his article titled The Tedium Twins.”
http://harpers.org/archive/1982/08/the-tedium-twins/
robert macneil (voice over): A Galilean preacher claims he is the Redeemer and says the poor are blessed. Should he be crucified?
(Titles)
macneil: Good evening. The Roman procurator in Jerusalem is trying to decide whether a man regarded by many as a saint should be put to death. Pontius Pilate is being urged by civil libertarians to intervene in what is seen here in Rome as being basically a local dispute. Tonight, the crucifixion debate. Jim?
jim lehrer: Robin, the provinces of Judaea and Galilee have always been trouble spots, and this year is no exception. The problem is part religious, part political, and in many ways a mixture of both. The Jews believe in one god. Discontent in the province has been growing, with many local businessmen complaining about the tax burden. Terrorism, particularly in Galilee, has been on the increase. In recent months, a carpenter’s son from the town of Nazareth has been attracting a large following with novel doctrines and faith healing. He recently entered Jerusalem amid popular acclaim, but influential Jewish leaders fear his power. Here in Alexandria the situation is seen as dangerous. Robin?
macneil: Recently in Jerusalem on a fact-finding mission for the Emperor’s Emergency Task Force on Provincial Disorders was Quintilius Maximus. Mr. Maximus, how do you see the situation?
maximus: Robin, I had occasion to hear one of this preacher’s sermons a few months ago and talk with his aides. There is no doubt in my mind that he is a threat to peace and should be crucified.
macneil: Pontius Pilate should wash his hands of the problem?
maximus: Absolutely.
macneil: I see. Thank you. Jim?
lehrer: Now for a view from Mr. Simon, otherwise known as Peter. He is a supporter of Christ and has been standing by in a Jerusalem studio. Robin?
macneil: Mr. Simon Peter, why do you support Christ?
simon peter: He is the Son of God and presages the Second Coming. If I may, I would like to read some relevant passages from the prophet Isaiah.
macneil: Thank you, but I’m afraid we’ll have to break in there. We’ve run out of time. Good night, Jim.
edlharris: I wanted to laugh but it was too painful.
Many thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Note to viewers of this blog: when you click on the link provided in the comment by edlharris, you will see that the article appears in HARPER’S MAGAZINE, online, 9-5-2014, and originally appeared in their August 1982 issue. It also contains others examples of unevenly weighted coverage, namely, re slavery and cannibalism. Laugh, cry, laugh and cry. And then ponder the substance of the piece.
“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” [Voltaire]
😎
All I can say is, thank you Diane for publishing this important writing. Outside of “Truthout” zine, there is absolutely no outlet for serious Critical Theory analysis.
What ever happened to the students. All I read about is the battle between two powerful groups (corporate and unions) for the overall power of education. Both groups have become too powerful and need to get back to reality. Charters started out as small groups that wanted to better education in urban districts, then corporations took over. Unions didn’t want charters because they weren’t unionized and didn’t feed into the union coffers. I see the need for unions in a corporate world, but there needs to be a place for nonunion choices also.
“…there needs to be a place for nonunion choices also.”
Yes, I agree. Everyone should have the option to work insane hours being belittled and persecuted for minimal compensation with no rights.
Nice false equivalence, BTW.
New Orleans is a truly sad experiment. Unfortunately the state politicians “believe” all the faux studies coming out which are funded by the charter benefactors. They refuse to see the truth and these families have no local area which they can voice their frustrations. They can go to the state run RSD or Baton Rouge, neither of which care to listen. Our BESE board puts in charters against the local parishes votes. It is very sad indeed. Once again, it’s about profit, not students. It was also found that the RSD had a 100% error rate in their graduation report. What happened to all these children? Check out Louisiana Educator, Mike Deshottels as well Dr. Schneider. He has to sue to get information/data from the LDOE. There is little to no oversight of charters by the state.
NPR and PBS have gone over to the Dark Side. Read the Los Angeles Times report “How PBS sold its soul to a billionaire donor” (LAT, 2/17/14). Or look at the PBS hatchet job on public employee pensions with the biased title “Pension Peril” that makes “unfunded liabilities” look like actual current debts instead of the easily affordable installment plans that they are. No mention of the fact that public employee pension money spent in any given state generates economic activity that provides a rate of return to many states that far exceeds the state’s annual contribution to the pension plan and that eliminating pensions would actually lead to tax increases because of the lost economic activity in the state. No mention of the fact that over the typical life of a 401k plan up to 40% of the plan’s growth will be reaped by banks in forms of various “fees.” The PBS News Hour brags about how trusted it is, but those who know the facts about its reports on schools and pensions know that it’s highly biased and deceptive.
Scisne,
Thanks for your concise summary describing the pension issue. The NBER (funded by whom?) could release research papers that explore the financial benefits of pensions. No less is expected from economists, who claim their discipline is a science.
The Los Angeles Times reported (6/12/12) that the state of California got a return-on-investment of more than 300% on the state’s annual contribution to the California Public Employment Retirement System (CalPERS). The state’s annual contribution of about $5 billion, which is just 5 cents of the state’s budget dollar in its $100 billion budget, generated more than $26 billion in economic activity and supported almost 100,000 private sector jobs as retirees spent their pensions on goods and services in California. Research by the non-political Boston College Center for Retirement Research shows that the typical state annually contributes less than 5 cents of its budget dollar to its public employee pension plan. What they do to scare taxpayers into being against public pensions is to add up the next 30 years of these small annual contributions to create a figure called an “unfunded liability” and then portray that sum as a huge current debt owed by the state to the public pension plan, when in reality the states only pay a small annual contribution of less than 5 cents of their budget dollar. The Great 401k Fraud is another matter and one that banks don’t want explored because they make so much money from 401k plans. That’s also why they want to convince people that Social Security is “bankrupt” and should be converted into 401k accounts. In reality, Social Security has a more than $3 trillion surplus safely invested in U.S. Treasury bonds (which the enemies of Social Security call “IOUs”) and has never paid out more than it has taken in from its three — three — sources of income. Those who claim it has refer to only one source of Social Security’s income and ignore the income streams from the other two sources. Social Security’s surplus has grown every year, including in the depths of The Great Recession, since 2008. PBS is very much on the side of the deceivers when it comes to these topics and to the charter school scam.
For at least the third time: You do not understand what an “unfunded liability” is. I’ve explained this to you, but you keep cutting and pasting the same words into new posts. Are you a person or a malfunctioning computer?
Flerp
You’d seem less like a selectively programmed computer, if you acknowledged the intentional omission of pension funding benefits from Wall Street economic analyses.
Few communities gain from the spending of the one-tenth of the 1%.
We can agree to ignore the short-term multiplier effect from the money that buys state CC$$ support? Once, CC is adopted, Microsoft and Pearson’s bank accounts will grow at the expense of local community economies.
Why does the Buras book cost more than $100?
George Schmidt,
Some small publishers put exorbitant prices on their books. I can only guess why because I don’t really know. Maybe they expect that libraries will pay $125. I asked Buras about this, and she said there would be a softcover for about $40. She has nothing to do with the pricing.