Peter Greene read an article in Forbes about the “nine things you need to know about school choice,” and he uses it to critique the current narrative about the wonders of choice.
Yes, there are more charters than ever before. No, charters do not have higher test scores than public schools. Yes, there are more students using vouchers than ever before, but they account for only 100,000 students out of 50 million, a tiny percentage. Eight states don’t allow charters (though there are efforts in some of the eight to authorize charters).
He sees the article as evidence of the “long game” of choice proponents:
Just keep insisting something is true long enough (public schools are failing, vaccines are dangerous, fluoride makes you communist, The Bachelor is a show about finding true love, charter schools are popular and successful) and eventually it enters Conventional Wisdom as, at a minimum, a “valid alternative view.” It’s not necessary for the things to be true, or even supported by facts– just keep repeating them uncritically and without argument, and eventually, they stick.
I beg to differ. Lies don’t stick over the long term if critics like Peter continue to expose them as lies. Over the long term, facts prevail. The Big Lie technique ultimately is revealed, and people recognize it as such. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t keep this blog going day after day.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just hope it’s not too late. With every step, the Deformers elude and lie.
TY, Diane, for posting this information.
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I too read the article in Forbes, written by Maureen Sullivan, that Peter Greene examined. He poked holes in it nicely.
Upon reflection, I’ll wager that anything written by the other Maureen Sullivan (former ALA president) would be much less biased and much more factual than anything from this toadie.
Gotta love this part from her full bio @ Forbes, “Now my kids are teenagers–one in a magnet school and one in private school–and the next step is college.”
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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“Over the long term, facts prevail. The Big Lie technique ultimately is revealed, and people recognize it as such.”
And that is why I continue to post Wilson’s work except it the is “The Big Truth” technique. If one can convince with the “Big Lie” one should also be able to do the same with the truth.
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“never refuted nor rebutted”…
“If one can convince with the “Big Lie”, one should also be able to do the same with the truth.” YES, but WHO is going to shoot their foot
(Break the circle)?
The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body…
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
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From a systemic standpoint, school choice cannot improve educational equity, but rather exacerbate inequity. There are several reasons for this.
1. The natural tendency of humans is to congregate towards those who are similar to ourselves. Just as de facto segregation is a reality of the choice some people have of where to live, school choice will lead to greater segregation for our students as parents enroll their children in schools with demographics similar to themselves.
2. Parents who will take advantage of school choice will be preferentially those who can afford it. Parents of children from more challenging backgrounds have to take logistics into consideration (transportation, convenience in terms of scheduling, etc…). Such bias will have the effect of increasing segregation.
3. Choice allows schools to pick the students they want to serve. Even in so call lottery admission where every student has the same chance of being admitted, downstream decisions such as expulsions and dropouts affect the demographics of the school.
Choice is not about creating educational equity, it is not about affording students of all backgrounds an excellent education. It is about keeping the undesirables out. Aside from segregation and inequity issues, school choice also creates problems of complexity.
I. As school choice increases, the complexity of enrolling children increases. Parents will have to navigate more and more propaganda and paperwork to enroll their child in a school.
II. Administrative work to make sure all students are enrolled in their school of “choice” becomes more of a burden as well as tracking where each student is enrolled over the course of the school year.
III. As school choice is more about the increase of charters and private schools, these schools will operate independently of each other, making oversight more difficult.
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To Vinh:
Thank you Vinh for your wisdom. It is a very thorough analysis for the meaning of CHOICE (= PRIVATE, not PUBLIC, not freedom in a particular viewpoint of public education).
Therefore, people should pay for their choice, BUT please DO NOT looting public education fund from many generations of TAX PAYERS.
People want their choice, they MUST pay for it.
In order to work or qualify for any positions in PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM, candidate MUST be graduated from K-12 and PSE of Public Education System. If candidate is from private school, then those private school system MUST FOLLOW the identical PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM. As a result, we call it, a NATIONAL STANDARDIZED K-12 to PSE system.
Rich or poor; smart or slow; gifted or challenged, young or old children will build their own self-esteem, mutual-respect, and empathy because they go through the same literature, music, sport and STEM under the guidance of the same qualification from teaching professional. Back2basic
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I’ll have to disagree, fluorosilicic acid is worse than the common core. Profit corrupts the water debate. People want to make money off of education, but medical doctrine is holy and pure and free from bias, yea, right.
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Will fluorosilicic acid help the Swiss cheese melt in our broccoli/Swiss cheese soup???
If anyone can give hints for melting Swiss in a broth/milk based soup I’d greatly appreciate it. (I’ve tried looking things up to no avail).
Thanks in advance!
Duane
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Double boiler? Control the temp. Too high and the fat separates. You can even take the soup off before adding room temp cheese. Grate the cheese and add very slowly stirring constantly. Try adding a touch of wine. Hard cheeses are much more difficult to get to behave. I haven’t tried this, but it might work to make a sauce (butter, flour, milk, then cheese) and then add it to the soup.
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Thanks, 2o2t!
We are coating the shredded cheese with flour (the recipe calls for it anyway) and that is helping. Seems the temperature part is quite important. I like your idea about making a sauce and then incorporating that in. We’re going to that next time.
It’s my son who found the recipe, made it once before and we liked it so he’s making it again. Gonna have some toasted rye bread to go with it.
Again, Thanks!!
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Check fondue recipes. Then add broccoli soup makings last. Salad w grapefruit sections complements fondue.
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Better yet, add the soup very slowly in small quantities to the sauce.
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Thanks to both 2o2t and booklady!!
My son thought I was crazy when I asked the question here. I knew I’d get some answers. We ended up lowering the heat (it wasn’t very hot to begin with) coating the shredded cheese with flour, putting it in a little at a time and letting it sit on top to heat up and then stirred it in. Worked out fine.
My son (the youngest of three, age 22, oldest boy is a chef, daughter does lying, oops I mean marketing) wants to go to chef school so he’s been looking up recipes and cooking a lot more-picking my brain (been cooking for most of my life, made my first pie from scratch of course, a lemon meringue when I was ten or so, bless my mom) as he goes along. It’s good to see.
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I would humbly ask viewers to reread the last paragraph of the above posting.
And I most humbly ask viewers to pardon this long comment. If you are able, please read to the end.
IMHO, this blog is not primarily intended for the BBBC [BoredBillionaireBoysClub] and heavy hitters of all political colorations and numerous well-connected celebrities. As I see it, it’s main audience is the vast majority of the population of the population included in the “all” in the phrase “a better education for all.”
Genuine learning and genuine teaching and genuine dialogue are messy, complicated, always trying one’s patience, sometimes going too fast and sometimes too slow, and when all is said and done—The Never-Ending Story.
In the ed debates the few aka “education reformers” have tried to set a self-serving narrative that effectively drowns out all other POVs. They have tried to create the illusion that there is no time to really discuss the issues or put them in context, that optimism demands unnecessary haste and predictable failure, and that they know what choices the vast majority should have. SLANT all the way for us hewers of wood and drawers of water.
In other words, create an accepted “normal” way of thinking about education, setting (and severely limiting) expectations for the vast majority in the minds of that very same vast majority.
Why is it so important that what are often barely expressed expectations by the vast majority be severely controlled and shaped?
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” [Harriet Tubman]
If only they knew they were slaves…
“I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.” [Frederick Douglass]
I didn’t know until I found out that…
Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass weren’t stupid people but they lived in times when abnormal thinking was normal—and when advocating and working for what we now consider normal was considered by a great many worse than unacceptable, e.g., perverse, devilish, abhorrent beyond words to describe.
The antidote?
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” [Frederick Douglass]
Hence this blog and others and all the other activities of the those striving for a “better education for all.”
But what the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement is attempting to do is well illustrated in a recent posting and comments in HuffPostEd. “Study Finds Pro-Charter School Arguments Are More Convincing.”
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/27/michigan-state-charter-school-study_n_6551926.html?utm_hp_ref=education
Read the posting and then ponder two of the comments.
Kwanna Ridout writes: “well then perhaps the truth of charter schools might be something to spread. how about their metrics? if johnny doesn’t meet them at the end of the first semester he’s bounced back to public school. if suzie doesn’t show up in her uniform she’s bounced back to public school. if the parent doesn’t fulfill their end of the contract, the student is bounced back to the public school. see a pattern here? all parents want their kid to attend a great school and get a wonderful education, but the same problems that plague public schools – lack of money, poverty, family illness, incarceration, drug abuse don’t disappear when you only take the cream of the crop. why don’t people understand why the public school system was the best thing that ever happened to this country? instead of helping to kill it, why not fix the external issues that influence it. and that includes the profit motive.”
To which Ashok Hegde replies: “Actually, you kind of make the point that Charter schools are the fix. Let the kids who can perform, and obey the rules have the privilege of attending a charter school. Let those who cannot suffer the consequences in a public school. The bottom line…we need to focus on children who value K-12, and will be the next generation of productive citizens…and we need to take focus away (at least in K-12) from students who don’t try, won’t grow, won’t end up using that education for much.”
The owner of this blog has been criticized for warning that the charterite/privatization movement is trying to mandate and make general—and LEGITIMATE—a two-tiered education system that strongly favors the advantaged few and is heavily weighted against the disadvantaged majority.
Want to know the educational “end game” for the leaders and enablers and enforcers and “thought leaders” of the “new civil rights movement of our time”?
To forget that folks like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass ever existed and wrote the above—and to think and feel just like Ashok Hegde.
In other words, for the overwhelming bulk of the population to show “grit” and “determination”—or even joy and enthusiasm—in accepting (for themselves and/or others) the sort of education that prepares them for nothing more than a servile station in life.
Is all the above too “shrill” and “strident”?
“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.”
William Lloyd Garrison. Right then. Right now. And if he were still around, he would be right with us in the fight for a “better education for all.”
😎
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TAGRO!
Talk about a four bagger with men on three of them.
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Actually TARGO!
AY, AY, AY!
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You hit it out of the park, KTA.
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I hope Peter Greene’s final paragraph is wrong… but…. after 35 years we “know” that government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem! And we “know” that regulations strangle innovation and the market place should decide what’s best! Alas, the very creation of “National School Choice Week” seems to support Mr. Greene’s premise. Here’s hoping his facts, yours, and those of other bloggers can help change the public’s view of their schools.
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One important point to continue making is that parents have never had a seat at the table where what will be made available to choose from is decided upon. They are presented with a backroom done deal and asked, indeed carpet bagged into rubber stamping it, the only kind of choice that is actually given to them. When parents do raise their voices and tell the politicians and edu-preneurs what they really do want, they are ignored and marginalized since they do not want money and resources extracted from their schools. Currently, school choice is exactly like the choice Henry Ford offered Model T buyers on the color of their cars, “You can have your Model T painted any color you like just so long as it’s black.” School choice as it is disingenuously promoted by choice pushers doesn’t even exist.
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