The Atlantic has an interesting feature about teacher protests around the world. Most are about low pay, but others are about working conditions, lack of respect, and–in the United States, at least–the standardization of curriculum and testing that is eliminating teacher autonomy and professionalism.
What is interesting in addition to the substance of the piece is the fact that it appears on the website of The Atlantic. For many years, The Atlantic was firmly tied to the corporate reformers and could be counted on to give them plenty of space for their views. Recently, however, The Atlantic has published numerous articles that conflict with the privatizers’ well-honed narrative of failed schools that can be “rescued” by taking away teachers’ job protections or by adopting the Common Core or some other reformy nostrum.
I thought maybe the ownership had changed. It has not. It is still owned by David G. Bradley, who also owns the National Journal.
The Wikipedia page for The Atlantic contains this tidbit:
The Atlantic Media Company receives substantial financial support from the Gates Foundation through the National Journal ($240,000+) to provide coverage of education-related issues that are of interest to the Gates Foundation and its frequent partner in education policy initiatives, the Lumina Foundation.[37][38] Critics have suggested that this funding may lead to biased coverage and have noted the Lumina Foundation’s connections to the private student loan company Sallie Mae.[39][40][41] Gates-funding of the National Journal is not always disclosed in articles or editorials about the Gates Foundation or Bill Gates, or in coverage of education white papers by other Lumina or Gates Foundation grantees, such as the New America Foundation.[42]
According to the New York Times in 2010, David Bradley’s wife, Katherine Bradley, paid $100,000 for a public relations firm to help Michelle Rhee polish her image.
During contract talks earlier this year, Ms. Rhee turned to Anita Dunn, the former communications director for President Obama, to help with her image.
A gift of $100,000 toward her fee was paid by an education philanthropist, Katherine Bradley, the wife of the publisher David Bradley of The Atlantic Monthly and National Journal.
Now it is Ms. Dunn’s firm, SKD Knickerbocker, that is coordinating Ms. Rhee’s rollout of her new group. Whatever advice it may have given her to bring all sides together when she was a public official, she clearly feels unrestricted by that now.
Google Katherine B. Bradley and Michelle Rhee to see the many ties between them.
Yet The Atlantic is now publishing articles sympathetic to teachers. Very puzzling. Did someone at The Atlantic have a change of heart? Or mind? Or get informed? Would love to know more about how they switched their views, as expressed in what they choose to publish.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m an Atlantic reader, and I noticed the same shift! I will say that there were a number of columnists that were very willing to engage in the comment sections, where there were quite a few of us teachers complaining about their articles. Based on those conversations, I think the writers were more the progressive-idealist types (not the republican free-market types), and there has been a recent turn away from the modern reform movement among progressives.
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I would advocate for journalism that is empathetic to teachers rather than sympathetic. I’m not fond of that response we often get “oh,my ours a teacher; bless your heart.”
I would also like to see teachers protest for,breather than against something; or at least put forth an alternative narrative. We want and should have more control over what and how we teach – so what will that look like?
We want a profession – what will we do with it?
We aren’t fond of the standardized testing – so what’s our plan?
What we are for, the message we send, may seem clear to us on these blogs, but that’s not where we have to sell it.
Because the other side, Gates et. al., has a pretty clear message of what they are selling. Like it or not, they have a product.
I’m not sure what our is – at least the one we are selling.
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What most educators are asking for is described very well in Diane’s last book, Reign of Error: http://www.amazon.com/Reign-Error-Privatization-Movement-Americas/dp/0345806352/
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I’ve read the book and appreciated it. But I find it is preaching to the choir, even though it’s right. It’s also still more about policy than actual teaching.
Here’s an example of what I mean by having a product: I the Common Core Math Wars, the side opposing CCSS has done little to articulate what math should be taught and how it should be taught. That’s what’s missing. I’ve taught math long enough to know that the answer in not to simply say let a teacher close the door and let a thousand flowers bloom.
So we get into these policy debates, and if we can’t articulate what good teaching might look like, we lose.
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I agree Peter. It is the nature of our profession that we are isolated from each other in our classrooms and not aware of exactly what and how it is taught in grades below and above us. We have been unable to articulate clearly what is wrong with CCSS and worse with standardized testing of children. I hope we can figure this out and take back our profession. Now that parents are on board I think we may be able to safe public education.
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Oops…”save” public education…
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This is not the case in Early Childhood Education (ECE) covering K-3. ECE experts were omitted from involvement in writing the Common Core, resulting in standards that are not developmentally appropriate being pushed into lower grades, with Kindergarten now being the new 1st Grade –and despite the fact that traditionally many school districts have only half day Kindergarten programs.
A lot of ECE experts have weighed in and addressed both ELA and Math standards, such as at the Defending the Early Years (DEY) project. Here’s an example from ECE Math expert Constance Kamii, “Selected Standards from the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, Grades K-3: My Reasons for Not Supporting Them” https://deyproject.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/kamiideyccssmathpaper.pdf
DEY was formed when it was believed by many ECE experts that the traditional primary ECE association stopped providing adequate leadership and rather uncritically accepted the CC standards that were handed down from on high. What about NCTM? Do you think their leadership is adequate? Do you know if Math teachers of older students have formed an alternative group?
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What is wrong with going back to the previous standards? Utah’s math standards, for example, were rated HIGHER by Fordham than the CC was. If everyone is all hot to trot about standards, even though there’s no proof that standards help anything, then why not pick from among the state standards that were better than CC? There were several, including Massachusetts.
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“Google Katherine B. Bradley and Michelle Rhee to see the many ties between them.”
And then google Michelle Rhee and Michael Lomax to see the ties between Rhee and the president and chief executive officer of the United Negro College Fund.
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The adversarial relationship between parents and teachers that ed reformers have promoted is to me one of the damaging aspects of the political arm of the “movement”.
Duncan was out speaking to the PTA again and the whole tone is adversarial- parents must DEMAND this or that. The assumption is that everyone who works is public education is somehow bound and determined to deny benefits to students. We have to submit a list of demands to our opponents in public schools? What?
It’s bizarre. The idea that everyone in my child’s school or local school government is out to harm my kid while he is my child’s only honest advocate is delusional. Talk about drinking his own kool aid. Who believes this, other than him?
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While it is unfair to say that some children will be ignored, I never had a problem with parents advocating for their children. In fact, some parents can be a pain, but it is our jobs to listen to parents’ concerns so I think we have to be receptive. I have seen squeaky wheels get oil repeatedly in a school setting. Since I taught ELLs, my parents generally trusted me implicitly. I tried to teach the parents to speak up if their child is having a problem in school. We did a lot of parent outreach and education to ease parents’ transition into dealing with schools in America.
Sometimes I advocated for students myself. When I taught high school, I saw students misplaced in math classes, and I worked with department chairs to make the change. I only did this when I was certain a student was misplaced. I even had the math department chair thank me when it was clear the student could handle algebra. Just because a student is Haitian does not mean the student belongs in general math; we must give each student the correct placement. It is wrong to profile students.
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Pitting teachers against parents / students is one of the linchpins, or foundational supports of corporate reformers’ disrupting of schools as a stepping stone to corporate takoever and busting the teachers union. It’s pretty sick and dysfunctional, deliberately so.
Here’s an example from Michelle Rhee’s time running the Washington, D.C. schools.
Check out this video about Hart Middle School, a Washington, D.C. school during the reign of Michelle Rhee. A new Rhee disciple principal took over. She was a former elementary school teacher. She had no experience in administration, nor in middle schools. She was young, 34-35. I’ll let the teacher tell it:
03:00 – 03:19
MALE TEACHER:
“Her (the principal’s) whole manner, her whole demeanor derived from … it was kind of Rhee-like in that that she had an outright disdain for the teachers and the other adults really, who worked at the school. Given all of this, the first few weeks of the year was just madness.”
This MALE TEACHER gives an accounting of that “BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT” event:
03:36 – 05:33
03:36 – 05:33 (transcript skips around to parts about
driving a wedge between teachers and parents/students)
MALE TEACHERS: “This was supposed to be everybody’s opportunity to meet each other, to talk about our shared focus and goals for the school year… so we (the teachers) are all milling around, welcoming parents…
“‘And the new principal comes in and her remark is:
” ‘Welcome… I’m “The Hip-Hop Principal” … Parents and students, I just want to let you know that it’s US… AGAINST all the adults here, including THE TEACHERS,” (then points over at the teachers standing together)
FEMALE TEACHER: “That one incident began to cultivate to a climate that ‘it’s us (principal/students/parents) against you (the teachers).’ It did not help with discipline issues. It exacerbated discipline problems, and things were way out of control.”
MALE TEACHER: “It had gotten so bad, in terms of control of the school, that teachers were calling 911 from their classrooms … there were daily assaults on teachers … because the principal herself was antagonistic towards teachers, that carried over to the young people.”
FEMALE TEACHER: “… She (the principal) wanted to build a relationship with parents by putting a wedge between parents and teachers. I don’t think she saw that the parents, the teachers and the students, and the entire community was the support services she would need she would need to lead (the school).”
05:40 – 06:26
MALE TEACHER: ‘Chancellors Rhee’s giant failure at Hart, and perhaps this extrapolates (to all of D.C. Schools)… was a total lack of regard for the teachers who were there, who had an institutional memory… and for the community that has to buy in…
“What happened with the Chancellor was that she set up a dichotomy of US (Rhee / students/ parents) against THEM (the teachers), as opposed to ALL of us together. And, had she really listened to all of those parents, there could have been the kind of change in that community that would have been the kind of thing that should have been celebrated.”
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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It has taken our mainstream media only 3 years to realize the error of their reporting. They jumped on the Education Reform/Deform bandwagon. They are bought and paid for by the billionaire boys club and perpetuated by a crop of bottom feeders who cashed in on the faux message of ALEC agendas. No other profession would have been so disrespected so easily. Why is it that other educated professionals who serve the public good are off limits? Why is it that educators whose sole purpose is the education of children, must defend our right to use our professional knowledge and not be second guessed by nonEducators? When parents are asked, they are satisfied with their local schools. There is power in numbers. Why can’t we seem to take back our power? The tide is turning, but not before the damage has been done to a whole generation of children.
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In WA, Gates is paying the Seattle Times to write ed deform favoring articles via their “Education Lab” section. They will never recognize the error of their ways because critical thought and ethics are lacking at that particular “news”paper. They just dutifully report on the topics they are told to write about, bring in guest authors from groups sympathetic to their cause like the CRPE, DFER, LEV, or Teachers United anti-union group, and keep quiet about their funding and their puppet strings. Ironically, EWA (Ed Writers Association) loves them some Education Lab, and has also been very non-critical about the ethical issues posed by the Gates-funded education propaganda masquerading as news.
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This year, the EWA refused to allow Anthony Cody and Mercedes Schneider to be members. Not much more you need to know.
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I’m not sure which “other educated professionals who serve the public good are off limits” you’re referring to, because teachers in higher education have been under attack as well, especially those who work in Teacher Education (who are mostly female) compared to other disciplines (who are mostly male).
I think the strategy has been to divide and conquer public service employees, not based on education but gender, since women dominate P-12 education, while the police and fire fighters are mostly men and they seem to be exempt from attacks –at least for now.
The divide and conquer strategy is also used to sow anger and discontent amongst non-union workers in the private sector against public sector union workers. Scott Walker admitted to using the divide and conquer strategy in Wisconsin. When Chicago teachers went on strike, the police and firefighters supported them. I think a united front is really important going forward, including both union and non-union employees, such as the low paid fast food and retail workers who are fighting for $15, so that the divide and conquer strategy doesn’t work.
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They are probably working on a way to make fire fighting and police work pay them Education is the clear money maker through teaching, testing, resources, hardware, software, training and real estate.
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Me too. I had thought maybe they had a different editor and was thinking of canceling my subscription.
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For backgrounder on Bradley/Rhee:
https://newarkschoolsforsale.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/high-roller-katherine-bradley-got-turnaround-for-children-inc-its-entree-into-d-c-schools/
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