Peter Greene performs a valuable dissection of Frank Bruni’s uninformed defense of the U.S. Department of Education and its current occupant, who has done so much to demoralize teachers, demand high-stakes testing, and pump many millions into the privatization movement. The column wouldn’t matter so much if it appeared in a grocery store tabloid, but Bruni writes for the New York Times.
Let it be noted that Bruni was a wonderful critic of food and wine in earlier days at the Times.
But he shows no evidence of knowing anything about education. He thinks American kids are too “coddled.” (Even the 50% living in low-income families?) He may have been the only critic in the nation to applaud the pro-charter, pro-parent trigger movie “Won’t Back Down,” which opened in 2,500 movie theaters and disappeared without a trace within 30 days.
Here is a small part of Peter Greene’s excellent post:
So– to recap– Bruni has taken the Senate attempt to re-authorize the ESEA, and instead of placing that in the context of a bill that has been awaiting re-authorization by Congress since 2007 and has finally been tackled by the appropriate Senate committee for that tackling, he’s creating a new narrative in which, steeped in an anti-department atmosphere, Murray and Alexander just kind of go rogue and float this bill created out of whole cloth just to spank the department.
So what else does Bruni want to point out in this alternate universe?
Well, goodness. Under this proposal, the USED would not have say “over how (or if)” teacher evaluation would occur. And– Good lord in heaven– here’s a short list of Things Bruni Does Not Know:
1) Even with the USED’s watchful eye, states are managing to gut the teaching profession. Current leader in assaulting the profession would be the Wisconsin, where they’re thinking that maybe anybody– even a high school dropout– can be a teacher.
2) USED’s ideas about how to evaluate teacher are stupid. Their major contribution has been to demand that teachers be evaluated by using student test scores, an approach supported by no actual research or science or even common sense, and repudiated by pretty much everybody who doesn’t have financial or political benefits tied to the approach.
3) “Or if”? Come on. Name one state, one school, one corner of the country where politicians and leaders are saying, “Let’s never evaluate teachers at all.” Well, except for charter schools. But the USED supports charters and the charter right to make up any rules they like, so again– if this is a problem, the USED is definitely not on the case.
4) The best teacher evaluation systems are coming from local school districts, not the feds. Time magazine is profiling a system created by UCLA schools in Koreatown (in LA– my son’s neighborhood!) that Audrey Amrein-Beardsley calls “legitimately new and improved.”
Frank Bruni is one of the most laughable critics in this century, and should stick to picking apart paella and tangine cuisine. He’s great at food, and has a one track mind about all other issues. It’s fine for him and others, but it does not suit those of is who educate and understand what that really means.
My criticism of a very shoddy article that Bruni wrote last year.
http://provocationsblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/my-reaction-to-trouble-with-tenure.html
My question to Mr. Bruni or many other critics, have they ever visited a class with over 30 students, many that speak another language and live in poverty? I suggest they spend a week in such a classroom, speak with the teacher, students and parents and then, perhaps then, they’d be qualified to make comments re this issue.
You are very generous, Maria, to allow him to get off with just a week in the trenches. If he is lucky, a week would make him realize that he has no business saying anything.
Perhaps, when we make public comment or give our opinions, assuming expertise, we should stick to those subject(s) on which we have expertise !!! To have knowledge on the subject of education, we should have knowledge about learning theory, the characteristics and stages of human development and the many learning styles of children and how they may change at different stages of their human and learning development !!!
Because we go to school and have children in school, we may assume there is some “common sense” about education !! But, to paraphrase a number of thinkers and intellectuals of the past, including Albert Einstein, “…..there is, in actuality, nothing common about SENSE !!”
Bruin’s Op-Ed exemplifies the rich, neo-liberal Democrat thinking on public education.
It is based only on their examination of what has to be done for other people’s children. Bruni, Duncan and their ilk take the word of rich business owners what is best for these other kids and chuckles that it is only the Right Wing who has the problem with their logical and sensible education prescriptions.
They want to appear like the humane Progressives against the ignorant and kooky Republicans.
We can not let them co-opt what is truly a meaningful and vital education for our kids.
Bruni is the enemy of our children equally to the horrible GOP folk he believes to be pedagogically above. He and Duncan must not labor under the delusion that they are enlightened and fighting the good fight.
The best strategy for Obama on down in terms of education is not just merely intellectual refutation of their beliefs…
…It’s shame.
Shame.
Shame.
Shame.
I tried to give it a chance, but when I saw the quote from Joel Klein, I abandoned ship.
The domestic gross (there is no foreign) for “Won’t Back Down” to date was about $5.3 million. The average price of a movie ticket is about $8. That means about 662k saw the film in a country with more than 200 million adults or 0.0033% of the total potential audience.
The budget for this film was $19 million to produce.
I literally just finished reading Bruni’s piece in today’s paper, came over here to the computer and immediately went to this blog. And, ah, yes, an intelligent dissection of the latest lunatic effort to defend the fiasco known as Common Core. Thank you Peter Greene! This blog is like a mental EpiPen… really. It’s like I get “stung” by the latest nonsense in the NY Times and then come here for the antidote. Why do I keep buying that newspaper??
My “favorite” line in Bruni’s column: “But what some of the Republican presidential candidates are doing is the equivalent of looking at a person who’s having a really bad hair day and recommending decapitation.”
What a dopey thing to write. And, this is the New York Times, our nation’s so called “paper of record”. Wow.
Reformsters are trying to destroy our public schools and this guy likens it to a “bad hair day”? And, then there’s the weirdo title of the column: “The Education Assassins”. What’s with that?
Meanwhile…..the top story on page one of today’s Times details how the Democratic party is “millions behind” in fundraising for the upcoming presidential election. Hmmmm…..maybe some of the bright lights at the Democratic Party ought to connect the dots. Obama and Duncan attack teachers using the Department of Education. And, lo and behold, the party is hurting for bucks. Guess they have to go suck up to the billionaires in this country even more, according to the article.
The fact is there are LOTS of teachers in this country. And, we talk to lots of people. (Remember, we’re really good at talking, right?) Bruni wants to call us “assassins”, fine. Personally, I prefer the term “citizens”. You know, citizens…people who care about their nation, who work hard for their families….people who believe in the value of public schools and want to protect their children from out of control government policies. Citizens who WILL be voting on November 8, 2016.
Bruni’s article was off the mark in many ways… but two ways not mentioned as yet:
==>Why is ANYONE giving ANY consideration to ANYTHING a bunch of marginal republican candidates have to say about education while ignoring what Bernie Sanders has to say? Sanders has more support than any single Republican and yet we are asked to pay attention to the utterings of Cruz, Rubio, Paul and Christie?
==>Why is no one outside of economics blogs emphasizing the USED’s role in the student loan debacle? Here’s an article from earlier this year that connects the dots: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/department-of-education-sides-against-students-to-feather-its-own-bed-in-for-profit-corinthian-colleges-debacle.html
Is it any surprise that USED has not taken the sides of students who have been fleeced by fly-by-night institutions and continue to be charged usurious interest rates by banks?
I just finished his book on college admissions. It was interesting and there were some tremendous tidbits in it – things he should have said stronger – he seemed hesitant to really believe what he was learning. Or hesitant to really suggest that a Yale or Harvard education may really (on average) be as useful to the student as a U. Arizona education or education from a small college.
But I couldn’t help feeling “this man is tremendously naive”. It’s a funny book – appears to be written to help parents of private school kids accept that they might not get into Ivy League and that might be okay for them. At the end, it finally gets to “it’s what the student does with the education that really matters not what the institution does with the student”.
And then there’s this piece. Looks to me like he didn’t really hear what he wrote in his book on colleges.
Dear Frank: I know it’s hard to learn to listen to what your soul says here. But you aren’t showing that you can do it. Please, sit back and stop writing about education until YOU learn the lessons you ran into writing the colleges book.
From reading this article, it would occur to me that when writing or speaking in public (comment) form one should confine oneself to his/her area(s) of expertise. To be informed on the process of education one should have knowledge of learning theory, the characteristics and stages of human development and the many learning styles of children and how they may change during the learning process !!!
I think it is not informed commentary on education to give your opinions without evidence of any expertise !! Is going to school or having children in school a marker of “education expertise” ?? Not necessarily so !! { Many thinkers and intellectuals of the past, including Albert Einstein, have commented that there is certainly nothing “common” about sense} !!
How much do you want to bet Arne Duncan reached out to Bruni and asked him to write the column?
Democracy, I bet you are right.
Just a minor point, but I believe that it is actually redundant to write “uninformed defense of Arne Duncan”