Dear Campbell,
I read in the Wall Street Journal that you have formed a new organization called “The Seventy Four,” meaning the 74 million children who attend school in America. I noted that you want to advocate on behalf of the children so they get a better education. You and I have that in common. We both advocate on behalf of our nation’s children.
As you begin your new advocacy, there are a few things you need to know. Some of them you can find in my book “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.”
For example:
*Test scores are not declining or flat. In fact, they are the highest they have ever been since the federal government started measuring scores in the early 1970s. They are the highest ever for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian students.
*Graduation rates are at their highest point in history, for all of these groups.
*Dropout rates are at their lowest point in history, for all those groups.
The schools and students that really need help are those who live in very poor communities. Kids who live in poverty often don’t have adequate health care, nutrition, decent housing, and economic security. Why don’t we work together to advocate for better living conditions for these children, their families, and their communities. Standardized test scores are a mirror of family income. Some poor kids beat the odds, but there is a tight correlation between test scores and family income.
Now, I realize that you are very concerned about the fact that 50% of our students are “below grade level.” I want to make sure you understand that “grade level” means “the median.” It is the midpoint, and it doesn’t have a set meaning. There will always be 50% above grade level, and 50% below grade level. That is the definition of “grade level.”
I don’t think you should be so fast to dismiss the intellectual calibre of American students. I strongly recommend that you obtain a copy of a sample eighth grade math test from the New York State Education Department. Make sure it is Common Core-aligned. Take the test. Please let me know how it goes and how many questions you got right.
Good luck with that! I am available to talk if you have any questions. Feel free to call or drop a line.
Diane Ravitch
It is also important to note that no measure Ms. Brown uses to get that 50% figure could really be called a grade level test. In New York, NYSED deliberately pegged proficiency to a very high level and as soon as the scores were reported, liars like Brown, Moskowitz, and Cuomo were representing them as meaning kids could not read or do math at “grade level”.
Lets not forget that Campbell Brown won in California, and basically had a defacto win in NY when Cuomo got almost everything he wanted.
Campbell the Clown was not directly involved in the Vergara decision in CA.
She was trying to support a similar law suit here (Wright v NY) but has moved on to form the 74M scam.
Thank you once again for bring important facts and considerations to the attention of someone who may have ulterior motives in engaging in the ed reform movement.
At Windy City Teachers, we find Campbell Brown and her ilk particularly dangerous given the public platform and funds from which her organization, and others like it, can draw from.
http://windycityteachers.blogspot.com/2015/06/finally-ed-reform-gets-ally.html
Campbell Brown and her ilk are frauds and imposters. They deserve ZERO attention and should be laughed off the stage in under their allotted 15 minutes.
My advice to CB, given the assumption that she really cares about 74 million P to 12 students is to simply GO AWAY.
Maybe she could teach?
Your offer is generous. She is clearly in need of some instruction.
But she could be functioning very much like one of the old talking dolls.
She is a messaging machine for others who are pulling the string.
“Campbell Brown”
Annabelle doll
From Conjuring?
Or talking doll
With pulling string?
Add “The Seventy-Four” to the list of astroturf education news sites which already includes Education Post, Chalkbeat (of Colorado, Tennessee, Indiana, and New York) and Idaho’s Idaho Education news. What each has in common is funding by market-based reformers and the fact these fake news group portray themselves as independent and objective. The old adage, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” is true. How can grassroots groups, publicize the true nature of these groups – propaganda? Media watch?
In a series of recent articles, the website, Truthout, has exposed the amount of money funneled to charter schools. PR Watch has posted similar calls to action, in their newsletters.
Since public schools are the prey of both political parties, programs, conducted by local citizens, at their public libraries are one answer. It’s been done in Columbus, Ohio, by a central Ohio friends of public education group. They showed films. etc. It’s a labor intensive process and slow in outreach but, activating one person at a time is preferable to doing nothing.
Local newspaper reporters have started to publish opposing opinion, where before, it was just a speed dial to Fordham. I assume the change reflects comments they’ve received.
😊
Ever the teacher, Diane.
It just amazes me they think they need yet another end reform org.
This prescription is so dominant we literally hear nothing else.
Both political Parties, two consecutive Presidents, just about every pundit and self proclaimed expert isn’t enough clout and influence for The Movement? What is she fighting against? The entire establishment agrees with her: charters, vouchers, testing, anti-labor and funding doesn’t matter. We get it. It’s ALL we hear.
Chiara: isn’t it evident that this is all self serving to these reformers? Perhaps they somehow feel some sense of guilt for the money that they possess, and this is their way to prove to themselves that they are still in touch with the “common ” people.
Pardon my cynicism, or maybe just another way to make more money for themselves, at the expense of students, teachers, and parents?
IMO- Campbell Brown must be bored, so now she’s looking for some other “cause” to make her own.
Business thinking is profoundly different from educator’s thinking. Educators & researchers look for objectivity & critical analysis. Business types look for advertising & influence. The B- culture is all about happy camperism & happy talk that’s not grounded in reality. Any criticism will hurt sales and every last bit must be eliminated.
74 million minus my four kids. Campbell, please leave my kids out of your so-called advocacy.
Thank you !!! We NEED to hear from parents who are clearly seeing the disaster unfolding, they ARE our children who are the pawns.
Just to be clear, this “organization” she is forming is going to be a “news” organization. She’s starting a major platform for the education “reformers” to spew their contempt, misinformation, and propaganda to dismantle the education system even further. Campbell is also married to Dan Senor who sits on the board of Students First NY. She has failed repeatedly in her job as a “reporter” to disclose this fact (he is also a Republican Party politician/consultant/advisor). There are no plans for impartiality in this “news” organization Campbell is founding.
“There are no plans for impartiality in this “news” organization Campbell is founding.”
No need for plans, just do it a la Faux News, ya know “Fair and Balanced” which I’m sure T74 will be able to mimic “Balanced and Fair, T74 for all your educational news”
Does Brown view the “74”, as a “human capital pipeline” ?
If Brown thinks Gates has the education formula, why aren’t his kids enrolled, at schools, living the “impatient optimists’ vision”?
The preponderance of free enterprise guys, from capital markets, on the boards of plutocratic-funded education organizations, would lead a normal person to smack her face at the absurdity of it.
Brown, another puffed up, self-appointed, enrichment savior, for the 0.2%
Gates has the education formula all right and it’s very simple
S + C = D
public schools + common core = dollars for companies like his
http://www.alternet.org/culture/why-are-americans-so-easy-manipulate-and-control
BINGO.
I want to have Campbell Brown and all of the other RheeFormer clones in a classroom where I’m the teacher with a few hand picked CPO’s (former combat vet Marines and special forces troops—one sitting behind each Rheeformer staring at the back of their heads) in attendance to keep order so my RheeFormer students pay attention and do all the work.
I’d start with a discussion about what poverty does to children—this would include some hard core gang-bangers, in prison for life, who would be brought in wearing shackles and chains to share with the RheeFormers what their world was like growing up, and what they think of school work and bubble tests.
Then there would be a power-point presentation comparing the real PISA breakdown by socioeconomic level that reveals how our children are comparable or better than almost all the other countries that take part in the PISA test Hunger Games.
For instance:
“In every country, students at the bottom of the social class distribution perform worse than students higher in that distribution, U.S. average performance appears to be relatively low partly because we have so many more test takers from the bottom of the social class distribution.
“A sampling error in the U.S. administration of the most recent international (PISA) test resulted in students from the most disadvantaged schools being over-represented in the overall U.S. test-taker sample. This error further depressed the reported average U.S. test score.
“Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.
“On average, and for almost every social class group, U.S. students do relatively better in reading than in math, compared to students in both the top-scoring and the similar post-industrial countries.
“The performance of the lowest social class U.S. students has been improving over time, while the performance of such students in both top-scoring and similar post-industrial countries has been falling.”
http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/
Then my classroom full of RheeFormers, that includes the oligarchs from Bill Gates on down the ladder, would take a mandatory bubble test written in Mandarin and passing would be set at 90 correct answers out of 100 total questions—next, that classroom full of RheeFormers would have to write an essay in English that would be graded by a computer programed to grade it in French or Spanish.
All the RheeFormers who didn’t demonstrate their grit in the bubble test and essay would then be required to spend a year in a boot-camp type school with Marine Corps drill instructors hounding them every step of the way until they demonstrated that they had learned what reality really is. In addition, the RheeFormers would eat the same average diet children who live in poverty eat.
Parents need to lead charge to protect public education. While teachers have targets on their backs, the students are the collateral damage. Protecting public schools is also protecting students. Parents should notify their elected leaders that their votes will be scrutinized. They should visit elected officials in groups to let them know that they are opposed to privatization and standardized testing. These parents should be prepared with facts about failed privatization, and supply elected officials with information, perhaps a brochure, about all the waste and fraud associated with charter schools and testing. Sometimes offense is the best defense. The public needs to use the power of a collective voice to make elected officials worry about reelection. We need an action plan to tip the scales.
Lloyd Lofthouse… I think you should have a metronome going so that they know exactly when they are expected to know each of the points they are going to be tested on. So they know that 30 minutes of the powerpoint followed by perhaps 5 1/4 minutes and 20 seconds “think” time should be enough for them to regurgitate the information with complete understanding… this is the “ed reform” style pacing calendar isn’t it? And are you not being too kind to give students boot camp without “the talk” first? They should be labelled and spoken to so they understand they are “lacking proficiency” so as to put them in the demoralizing frame of mind that will “help them do better” next time!! In fact, there should be a race track on your classroom wall and each student has to place his her “car” where they stand on the test results. Coloring in their race car is considered an “art lesson”!
Good ideas. How about making them wear a sign around their neck that shows their score on the test and essay? After all, if we want to take a page from the RheeFormer playbook, we have to use a toilet plunger to cramp grit down their throats.
I’m beginning to really dislike the word “GRIT”!
Lloyd… Grit is something dirty and under foot that needs to be wiped off on a “Welcome” mat! 🙂 And yes… the sign should be in red letters and placed on the forehead… oh wait… they are not allowed to read The Scarlett Letter” anymore right? Okay, let them wear them around their necks! And I might add that I actually took the race track reference from a “real playbook” put into action a few years ago. Schools in my county had race tracks in the main halls and results were posted! Really!
Campbell Brown may be the only person in America who thinks Garrison Keillor is serious when he says all the students in Lake Woebegone are above average.
🙂
I don’t think Cambell Brown understands irony, satire, humorous social commentary, allegory, metaphor, hyperbole, or … But wait, what was I thinking? These are things you learn from a deep engagement with literature and a willingness to understand the feelings of others. These are NOT things students must “know and be able to do” according to the Deformers.
We can find nuances, different POVs, shades of grey, among the heavyweights and enforcers of the education establishment aka self-styled “education reformers”?
Sure, if you label as “disagreements” the “discussions” among the hawkster predecessors of the rheephormistas in the run up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. For example, will the cost of American involvement be completely and entirely paid for by Iraqi oil or will taxpayers have to cough up a tiny little bit?
Campbell Brown, like the rest of the $tudent $ucce$$ crowd she runs with, knows that engaging in a transparent, fair and public discussion with folks like the owner of this blog is a death sentence to edubullies everywhere.
If you “disagree,” Ms. Brown, there is a simple way to make your “disagreement” meaningful. Come on to this blog. Diane Ravitch will make sure you can express yourself in full.
Or have David Coleman, Michelle Rhee et al. already warned you of the perils of subjecting yourself to a process that will test your facts, logic, consistency, critical thinking, and moral compass?
The ball is in your court.
😎
Well said Diane Ravitch – Seriously, let us convene all of these supposedly very well-intentioned education reformers and (a) agree on the desired end and (b) the best means to these ends.
Advice for Campbell Brown: HANDS OFF !!! Find yourself another cause. Surely, there must be something else you can do to fill up your time, rather than posing as the savior of public schools and their students in the U.S.
Irrespective of Ms. Brown, Wall Street has proven it lacks the skills to increase GDP so, the choices are limited to ripping each other off or ripping others, off.
A Wall Street philanthropic “cause” has the cover of plausible greed deniability. But, selling capital markets products or “causes” can get tricky, as many have found. In the case of school privatization/corporatization, evidence must be ignored (Ohio). With sincerity, the spokesperson must be willing to distort truth (improved integration, better outcomes, equal reporting/conditions) . The spokesperson may have to parrot the contrived excuse that, education reformers are flying without the data, they claimed was essential, because they are impatient optimists. In other words, they have to be willing to say whatever it takes, while the 99%, confront them to tell them they have no clothes on. The pay and inferred subsequent political appointment or corporate board position would have, to have, a lot of value to him/her but, his/her public regard, no value.
The grandiosity of public education takeover requires a different roll-out, than shilling for whole life insurance, variable annuities, reverse mortgages, for-profit colleges, student loans, heavily-advertised, but no better, cancer centers, payday loans, derivatives, and shaky homeowner mortgages, etc.
A lot of applicants wouldn’t want the inescapable job burn-out, even if (1) they had the moral temperament and combination of skills that might work in the job (2) got to hang out with the 0.2% and the media they own and (3) were paid more than 10 times the amount a teacher makes.
I saw today on Facebook a really good idea. Our Senators should wear uniforms showing their corporate sponsors. I think all the corporate reformers should also wear uniforms showing their sponsors. In addition, as someone said earlier, the back of their jerseys should contain their SAT, GRE, LSAT or any other personal standardized test score. They should wear these scores and sponsors like scarlet letters.
Good idea.
But we don’t have to wait for them to do it. We could put together t-shirts with the proper logos on them and then edit their heads into the image to post on-line.
Spectacular idea.
For their corporate sponsors, the 13 Democratic senators who voted for TPP would need a bigger space than is provided by t-shirts.
And, sadly, the labor logos would be a small patch, covered by a t-shirt pocket, filled with Wall Street money.
How about rating our Senators and Congresspeople a la the Danielson method for public service workers?
I daresay that most of them would rate an “ineffective”.
Campbell Brown…you don’t represent my kids either…
Keep your filthy hands off the education of my children, and the other 74 million as well.
Step near them, and I will have you arrested by local authorities for criminal mischief…and that’s for starters.
I’m sure I speak for the 74 million when I ask you to do the following if you truly care about our children…
Please go and crawl back under the rock from which you came out from.
The American people have no use for your type of trash.
Dr. Ravitch, you forgot that all the students are above the average in Lake Woebegone. Do you think that Campbell Brown can sue her college for miseducating her in math and vocabulary?
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Diane, Unfortunately the only thing Brown know how to read is a script either during her “juornalism days” or as she reads from the the script of her reformer funders today. Her phoney cause is fitting for a has been at a young age.
Maybe C. Brown’s new site is going to be an historical one:
From Wiki:
“The “seventy-four” was a type of two-decked sailing ship of the line which nominally carried 74 guns. It was developed by the French navy in the 1740s and spread to the British Royal Navy where they were classed as third rates. From here, they spread to the Spanish, Dutch, Danish and Russian navies. The design was considered a good balance between firepower and sailing qualities, but more importantly, it was an appealing ideal for naval administrators and bureaucrats. Seventy-fours became a mainstay of the world’s fleets into the early 19th century when they began to be supplanted by new designs and by the introduction of steam powered ironclads.
As a standard type, the seventy-four was only an ideal construction. There was great variation between seventy-fours of different navies. In the period 1750-90, different ships could have displacements of anything at just under 2,000 tonnes up to 3,000 tonnes. The armament could also vary considerably with everything from 24-pounder to long 36-pounder guns and some seventy-four of the Danish navy actually only had 70 guns.[1]”
Who would have that that Campbell had such esoteric tastes