A few months ago, John Merrow was having a fund-raising drive for his program, and I sent a check. He promptly returned it and said it was a conflict of interest for him to accept any funding from someone he might cover. I was impressed, right up to today, when John announced to the world that he has agreed to join the Board of Directors of Pearson, Inc.
This is shocking news. Here is how he explains it:
It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but I want my friends to know that I will be joining the Board of Directors of Pearson Education. This was not an easy decision, and I know that some of my friends, particularly those on the left, will be angry with me. I ask you to withhold your judgment until you have finished reading this.
Pearson has been criticized, unjustly in my view, for putting profits ahead of children, but I have gotten to know some of Pearson’s leadership, and I can attest that they are caring parents who are devoted to their children. Recently I took one of my grandchildren to a polo match at the home of a Pearson executive. When my little girl fell and scraped her knee, our host attended to her every need. He could not have been more caring. Pearson hostile or indifferent to children? I don’t think so. I know better.
Pearson has gotten a lot of bad press, and I may have contributed to that with my reporting about the ‘Opt Out’ movement and its attacks on assessment. For example, when the Pearson Foundation was forced to shut down and fined $7.7 million for some questionable practices, the press coverage made it sound as if the Pearson Foundation had been guilty of child molestation. All it did was entertain some decision-makers in an effort to create a relaxed atmosphere where they could make important decisions about purchasing tests and other education products, perhaps from Pearson Education but also available from McGraw-Hill and other companies.
Why have I accepted Pearson’s invitation? Well, it’s not the money. Yes, it is true that I will receive something north of $100,000 per year plus stock options, but I publicly pledge that I will donate some of that largess to charity.
I am doing this because, frankly, I believe I can do more good from the inside than I can from outside
I guess his theory is that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Another sell-out. Especially troubling since he starts in his new position today, April 1. (Hint: April Fools’ Day. He fooled me.)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a whore Merrow is…he will receive “$100,000 and stock options”….poor guy gets only that pittance. Is there a teacher in America who earns $100,000 a year even after 30 years of teaching and a PhD? Is there anyone left who cannot be bought? And he sells out for peanuts compared to the trillions of unethical gains Peason rakes in.
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Just read the link…and see that some of my fav and most trusted ed commentators think Merrow pranked us…hope so. I am way too jaded, but then I live in the land of Eli Broad and the other deformers, Los Angeles and from bitter experience I generally believe the worst.
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Gag me with a polo mallet. What kind of kool-aid were they serving
He sounds like the parents who think that their decision for “their” child makes good education policy. “Pearson’s leadership, and I can attest that they are caring parents who are devoted to their children.”
I certainly hope he has or will retire(d) from journalism given this extreme conflict of interest.
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Amazing. Bought into Silence. But it’s about the children.
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Please tell us this is an April Fool’s joke.
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Polo?? Seriously? What schools do their children attend?? Private?? Public?? I’m more disappointed that he used Polo match to demonstrate the compassion of the Pearson people, yes they might care about the kids playing polo, but I still believe they do not give a DAMN about the children (urban/rural/poverty) stuck in the perpetual cycle of failure and testing as a result of folks like Pearson who think that money is the great equalizer – SILENCER- maybe but not equalizer.
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Once polo entered the conversation, I realized this must be an April Fool’s or he is the biggest wing nut in the history of mankind. You base your view on the entire Pearson Corp. on your daughter’s skinned knee at a polo match?! I hope this is a joke- if not, this guy is a joke.
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Nothing like a good upscale polo match as a venue to discuss the future of public education.
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I definitely think Diane is having fun on this April Fools Day!
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If this isn’t an April Fool’s joke, it should be. A polo match at an executive’s home? My students in rural SC don’t even know what polo is. A child scrapes her knee and that’s proof that Pearson has children’s welfare in the forefront? Seriously? It isn’t the money but it IS more money and stock options than any teacher ever receives–and it absolutely won’t affect his objectivity? Pearson was fined 7.7 million but it’s the bad press that’s really the issue? What a great piece to use when I teach satire…because this can’t be real.
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Ha ha! A great prank! Here’s one of the best lines from Merrow’s site: “Why does Pearson want me on its Board? I believe the invitation is based on their respect for my 41 years of ‘telling it like it is’ in American education. I’m sure the cynics, aware that the current Board is entirely Caucasian, believe that Pearson wants me for diversity. Wrong! Pearson assured me that my status as a Native American (I am 1/128th pure Cherokee) did not influence its decision.”
You got me, John and Diane. Bravo!
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Got me. First one today, too.
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Helping your own children isn’t the same as helping children in poverty that you gain nothing monetary from. Of course they like their own children, their employees children, their friends and socioeconomic classes kids. It is the disregard for the “OTHERS” other class of people that they disregard.
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Interesting interview with a teacher/author opposing the “testocracy”: The Fight Against High-Stakes Testing: A Civil Rights Movement
http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/29948-is-the-next-civil-rights-movement-against-high-stakes-tests
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Ha! Not the best one today for me. I saw one that our Indiana governor resigned. THAT would have been a great truth. But I enjoyed the moment of glee until I realized I’d been had. I may learn to like this holiday if I keep hearing stuff that releases the natural endorphins. This one didn’t but it was still good!
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One wonders what money will buy, which is worth the thing Merrow is turning his back on. No, not his own integrity, I mean the vision of for justice itself. So many have shed blood, and laid down their actual lives in defense educational opportunity for the generation entrusted to them…
And I guess I have to laugh at myself. I corresponded with Merrow once, when he was preparing his Rhee story. Here’s the comment I posted on my own wasted EdWeek guest blog about Washington Post reporting and Kaplan K12 Learning. I had forwarded my own email conversations to Merrow .
“I’m truly heartened to see that John Merrow is looking into the Washington Post’s editorial complicity in the cover up of Rhee’s erasure cheating cover up.”
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2013/04/teacher_highlights_washington_.html
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I too thought “April Fools.” Merrow is stupider than I had thought. Even Hitler had empathy for some individuals. “One Pearson executive empathizes with a child who hurt her knee, ergo Pearson (the company) can be neither hostile nor indifferent to (the class) children.” I suppose Pearson would score this claim as exemplary critical thinking.
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Gotcha
Sent from my iPhone
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Thank God.
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I admire the subtlety of this prank. I was gearing up to write about how caring for one’s OWN children isn’t nearly the same thing as caring for “those” children, and then I saw Diane’s admission that it was an April Fool’s joke. Great stuff.
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Got a lot of people who have a real need for investigative reporting–and also 41 years or more of wisdom in their chosen profession.
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Wish I made that much as a teacher . I know my job is a helluva lot more important . Disappointed😞
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The problem with an April Fool’s prank like this is that it is getting impossible to know what is or is not satire in regard to stories of a nature similar to this.
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Daniel Katz,
With the advent of “reform,” it has become almost impossible to separate fact from fiction, satire from reality.
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Ok I have been had! So glad it was a prank😄
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Hello! April Fool’s Day. John Merrow fooled all of us. Laugh.
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This is getting funnier by the minute, as the relief floods in. It’s hysterically funny.
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^^0^^ a much needed LOL
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This has to be an April Fool’s joke – it is so tinged with irony, and the rationale is on the edge of comedy “…Recently I took one of my grandchildren to a polo match at the home of a Pearson executive.” I love the comments, too, about how Pearson was just discussing merchandising/purchasing options with stakeholders…. Best joke of the day!
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Of course, it is an April’s Fool joke. Maybe too subtle. Lots of people angry at John!
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Haven’t we all had that experience on the polo field? Our children running around the estate scraping their knees. Luckily the hosts are always so attentive. Of course, this experience can be extrapolated to mean that Pearson cares for all our children, not just those of perspective employees. Poor misunderstood mega company!
Ellen #CryingInMyBeer(Not)
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Knew this a prank when the scraped knee anecdote showed up.
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I could forgive anyone who didn’t realize this was satire. Merrow was, after all, one of the original and most vocal of Rhee’s early cheerleaders.
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Dienne: you reminded us of something very important…
I applaud anything Mr. Merrow does that promotes genuine learning and teaching, but I suggest viewers of this blog visit his blog for an entry of 4-18-2013 entitled “Who Created ‘Michelle Rhee’?”
Link: http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6316
Read it. Then compare it to the piece highlighted in this posting and commented on in this thread.
Then ask yourself: was his attempt at diffused responsibility [with a touch of teflon] any less of a parody or April Fools prank than the current piece? Could he possibly have been serious when he neglected to mention in 2013 that he personally bears a very large share of the responsibility for—to paraphrase him—creating Michelle Rhee?
With all due respect—and again, anything he does to support a “better education for all” gives him credit in my book—he gave away a large share of his own good reputation and public esteem to provide cover and lend heft to a lightweight mediocrity.
And unfortunately, he’s not only forgotten to reclaim what he so eagerly surrendered to her, he has seemingly abandoned even the attempt to reclaim what is rightly his. All in the name of mental health—he doesn’t want to make her his life’s obsession.
When you add the element “self-“ to the words “parody” and “caricature”—and contextually put “pitiless” in front of both—it’s no laughing matter.
At least not for me.
I apologize for anyone offended by my downbeat approach, but regardless of whether I agree or disagree with the owner of this blog, I do admire and respect her doing what John Merrow and so many others seemingly can’t—
You lead by example, being your own harshest but fairest critic and corrector. Not understatement. Not overstatement. Just keeping it real.
Not Rheeal.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
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Well, that’s why I fell for the prank, KrazyTA … but beyond his shortcomings, Merrow represents, to me, the hope that journalists and others can regain their equilibrium after sliding down that slope of collusion and boosterism, as so many have slid. Give them room to come over, if they can do it.
When they can, it’s an affirmation of humanity’s wellspring of existential freedom to choose, and besides that we need every hand we can get on deck right now.
What surprised me was not that I could believe it of him, but that I had set so much store in Merrow’s redemption, as it were. I couldn’t read the last paragraph because I had actually choked up.
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Big hug and kiss to you TA for remembering this. Maybe we are the only two who found it outrageous at the time…and have long memories.
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Whoops. Looks as if a lot of people aren’t reading to the end of your post either I am getting some nasty mail. Oh well
Sent from my iPhone
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You got me, I didn’t check my calendar today…my spirits are now uplifted. Thanks for a well played prank!
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Keep your chin up, John. I think you stirred things up a bit.
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Dear Dr. Ravitch:
I really love reading this thread. I need to read all posts from this forum in order to learn who is John Merrow.
I hope that every educator and reader in this website will forever have an absolute faith in humanity. In other word, we all absolutely trust the integrity in us and in Dr. Ravitch regarding our priority of protecting, maintaining, and improving American Public Education Autonomy at all cost.
Also, at any given time and day, EDU-reformers cannot buy out or defame CONSCIENTIOUS educators, journalists and parents in this highly democratic and multicultural society.
Yes, this earth is impermanent and constantly changes, but, our conscience in humanity is forever unchanged and ONLY becoming diamond that pierces through greed, ego and lust.
I absolutely trust your integrity. May King
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Oh, Diane, you have been snookered by an April Fooler.
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And I see that instead I have been snookered. You win!
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this looks like an April Fool’s joke
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The best response is to not rush to judgement. We are often too quick to pre-judge with guilt by association. Randi Weingarten endorsed my book and Dr. Howard Fuller is my friend. Where does that put me?
I tried to change things from the inside by working for choice schools, charter schools and am a strong advocate for public schools where I spent my adult life as a teacher and administrator. I realized the problem is much deeper than the name on a school. They all are forced to follow the same failed system
The bottom line is it is about kids. I stand strong and unwavering for the best interest of kids, against the testing fiasco and for a viable alternative. If John Merrow can get Pearson off the testing fiasco and on track to what is suggested, I applaud him. If not…. then there will be a new, hard discussion
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“If John Merrow can get Pearson off the testing fiasco and on track to what is suggested, I applaud him.”
?!?
Cap, John didn’t actually join the Pearson board. He just bent his criticism of Rheeform back a little, after Adele Clothorne’s revelations, enough to keep his NPR day job. This April fool joke is actually a pretty cool slap at Pearson, and its from that quarter that retaliation might come. I hope everybody is prepared to rally to his defense if he does.
His situation is different from yours, Cap. Do you actually want to come over? April Fool special: Ally ally ally out is in free.
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He got me hahaha
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you got me good!!
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The grandchild anecdote was a dead giveaway.
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Especially disappointing in light of his recent mea culpa regarding: Michelle Rhee/DCPS/DC-CAS testing “issues”. Oh well. Still proud of those who still have ‘grit’, integrity, high ethical standards. We will preserver.
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