Campbell Brown, the pretty and telegenic face of the “reform” movement, was interviewed by Fortune magazine about her new website, funded by rightwing billionaires like the Walton Foundation.
Brown’s first foray into “education reform” was her campaign against sexual predators in the public schools. So far as I can tell, she never attended a public school and neither do her children, but somehow she concluded that a significant number of teachers in New York’s public schools are sexual predators.
She went from there to the big time, leading a campaign to save children from tenured teachers (who might be sexual predators). The case against tenure has never been clear, since high-performing districts have tenured teachers as well as low-performing districts. Brown seems to think that getting rid of tenure will lead to a better education for all children. It would be helpful if she offered some evidence for this belief.
She claims that she is not opposed to teachers’ unions but she is quick to claim that anyone who disagrees with her is fronting for unions.
I offered her some friendly advice recently. I offered to join with her in a crusade to help the nation’s neediest students, whose biggest disadvantage is poverty, not tenured teachers. We could campaign together for more resources for the schools they attend, the restoration of teachers of the arts, the full funding of the band and physical education and foreign languages. She hasn’t answered.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Go Diane. I love how this post combines your historical wisdom and research-based advocacy with a strong and sensible offer to Campbell Brown to team up for a truly worthy cause.
I agree. Your generous offer has a lot of wisdom behind it and facts that are hard to beat.
Billionaires want to own every channel of communication, not just the technologies but the messages, and the big data methods for analyzing what people are seeing, hearing, what they are doing and where, and what they might be enticed to do next.
Something here reminds me of “the medium is the message” and the art of culture-jamming with strategies from Ad-Busters and other provocateurs. The “refuse the test” movement has made some waves but it leaves much more untouched. Some street theater anyone?
Check out this from Edushyster, who
spoke to someone within Ms. Brown’s
organization:
http://edushyster.com/will-the-74-investigate-charter-scandals/#comments
According to this insider, members of
“THE 74” ‘s “investigative team”—those
intrepid gumshoes hired by Ms.Brown to
dig up dirt, and report on horrific problems at
traditional public schools—are
simultaneously barred from any activity that
looks into charter school malfeasance, or
from ever speaking ill of privately-run charter
schools.
Furthermore, the source told Edushyster that
whenever media does high profile exposes of
charter scandals, the folks at “THE 74”—per
Ms. Brown’s marching orders—are supposed to
ignore them and pretend that these charter
school scandals never happened.
So I guess those children among Ms. Brown’s
“74 million students” who attend lousy and
damaging privately-run charter schools are
not worthy of, or are not appropriate candidates
for Ms. Brown’s advocacy or protection.
(keeping a promise to Ms. Brown’s
pro-privatization funders, no doubt).
Loose lips sink ships.
This Mercury group that Ms. Brown and “THE 74” has hired for it’s “communications strategies”…
http://www.mercuryllc.com/strategies/
… apparently is too sleazy even for Walmart, as Walmart executives fired Mercury when Mercury’s operatives were exposed in the press as they were impersonating journalists…
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/25/local/la-me-0625-walmart-20120625
That says a lot.
It’s also the same group that management of the L.A.-based Alliance charter school organization hired for its ultra-sleazy union suppression efforts:
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-charters-union-20150314-story.html
That shows you what Ms. Brown and her group is all about.
Love how Fortune describes her fairy tale. Campbell Brown is so clueless and absent-minded that even the editor has to put the notes with an asterisk.
Thank you for responding. I had no confidence in Ms. Brown’s vision of the future of education. It is sad that with all that needs to be done in education, for children, we spend so much time on politics and beating dead horses.
I sent Campbell Brown a copy of my book, THE GEOGRAPHY BEE, about a teacher’s fight against excessive testing in the public schools. I await a response.
Well, let’s just say that “The seventy four” is not “a site to discuss a better education for all” as there appears to be no commenting on the “articles” and opinion pieces, just a “submit a letter to the editor” function. No lively, let’s get everything out in the open in the discussion of the “very” public function of community public schools. No, write the editors and maybe they’ll see fit (if it fits their agenda) to publish what you have written.
Control, gotta control, no dissent, control, gotta control!!! From the site:
“Letters to the Editor
Join the Conversation
Let us know what you think about the stories that matter most to you
Required field = *
We may occasionally choose to publish letters on our site. Writers of letters selected for publication will be notified via contact information provided in the form. Letters may be edited and shortened for space.
You can also send us a letter by mail:
The Seventy Four
222 Broadway
19th Floor
New York, NY 10038”
Control, gotta control, no dissent, control, gotta control!!!
For me one of the most important aspects of Diane’s site here is the open discussions, back and forths, advocating by all. Is it hard to be an edudeformer and post here? Hell yah, because the amount of teaching experience, research and knowledge of public education and the teaching and learning process that the various individuals bring quickly debunks, annihilates the many false memes, discourses and propagandistic talking points unceasingly spewed forth by the edudeformers and privateers.
Liars and bullies do not like to be challenged!
I think the fact that she was interviewed by a magazine named “Fortune” says a lot about what the real agenda is.
Yes, this is very unbiased and reportorial.
It’s an 800 word campaign commercial for Scott Walker.
” He also underscores yet again his commitment to empowering parents to make the educational choices they feel best for their child:”
Boy, the Waltons and the DeVos families are sure getting their money’s worth. I know she’s a media figure but are real reporters really going to play along with this? Doesn’t that damage their own credibility, pretending this is a “news” site?
https://www.the74million.org/article/scott-walker-is-in-9-things-to-know-about-his-education-record
Mainstream media has been pretending to be “news sites” for many years now.
I worry as real media shrivels, people like Campbell Brown will rationalize doing what is basically PR, but with a media person’s claim to objectivity and the connections to policy circles that Brown has. It used to be that this behavior was considered beneath a real journalist, but it looks to be no longer the case.
Recognized journalists like Cynthia Tucker and Jonathan Alter are apparently on board for this corporate propaganda tour. It’s unfortunate
What can we do to make donating to the real needs of our schools and children as much fun as playing with teacher bashing, vouchers, charters, and the ever present consultants? Rich and famous people aren’t stupid as a rule. Why can’t they see how much good their donations could do?
I think this will end her career. It will flop. Who’s going to watch it? It’s ridiculous. They doth protest too much.
And will Arne get a job on the show?
I M,
It’s a web site not a TV program (yet, don’t give em any ideas now).
“A voice for those who don’t have one.”
Why does she think our children don’t have a voice? Do her children have a voice? Would she allow me to speak for them? Why is she speaking for mine?
TAGO.
“Why is she speaking for mine?”
Probably because she is what Spiro T described as an “elite impudent snob.”
Remember when she was on Colbert and a handful of teachers and parents, including teachers and parents of color, picketed outside and she cited them as the “reason” why she cannot reveal her donors? Seems like she has very narrow ideas about who is allowed to speak for children.
From a “flashcard” on charters:
“As of 2011, charter schools historically had experienced a 15 percent closure rate.”
Does anyone know offhand if that is an accurate statement. (and/or is that an overall rate, a yearly rate, a country wide rate, etc. . . )
National charter stats are meaningless. 95% of public education policy comes from states and schools are inherently local. NYC and Boston and DC have absolutely nothing to do with what’s going on with charter schools in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania.
If one state closes 90% of charters that fail and the other closes 0% these national stats they trot out mean nothing to people who live in the “disaster” charter states.
From another “flashcard””
“Are there charter schools in other countries outside the U.S.?
Many countries have school choice systems similar to charter schools, with varying levels of success.
Great Britain, for example, has recently created ‘free schools,’ which are substantially similar to charter schools. A recent study from a conservative British think tank argued that the free schools help improve performance in neighboring traditional schools.”
Now I know that I took a world geography course in 1965 and my last geography course in undergrad “Geography of South America” in 1977 or so, but I didn’t realize that Great Britain was “many” countries (I don’t consider three to be many, three is a few).
I offered her some friendly advice recently. I offered to join with her in a crusade to help the nation’s neediest students, whose biggest disadvantage is poverty, not tenured teachers. We could campaign together for more resources for the schools they attend, the restoration of teachers of the arts, the full funding of the band and physical education and foreign languages. She hasn’t answered.
Pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?
IMO- another wealthy, bored celebrity looking for a cause to fill up her time, not interested in actually working to find viable and equitable solutions.
Campbell should come volunteer at my school. She would love it.
LOL! I’d love to have her come to my school, located in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the poorest borough of NYC.
I don’t think she would last 5 minutes…..
“Brown’s own two children attend private school”
Of course they do. It’s almost a requirement: before you opine on public schools make sure you and yours never actually enter one. Are NYC private school teachers union members, like they are in Chicago? Why is it okay for teachers in elite schools to belong to unions but not okay for teachers in ordinary schools to belong to unions?
No, New York City private schools aren’t unionized, and neither are any schools in Chicago other than the Lab School, which is a division of a huge and spectacularly wealthy research university. At-will employment is a central, essential condition at elite independent schools like Dalton or Lakeside and the expensive religious school Brown’s kids attend.
C’mon, Diane. I share your politics, but if we open dismissing her for her looks, are we any better?
I didn’t dismiss her for her looks. I consider it a compliment to be pretty and telegenic. I would be happy to be called pretty and telegenic. I do dismiss her for having no knowledge of education.
I think Diane’s comment about being pretty and telegenic is very telling about who gets a voice in our American media. Reporters on all news networks all look more like Barbie dolls these days. Although there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that, you can’t deny that her cutesy looks help her exceedingly misguided views on education gain traction. Let’s hope the Kardashians don’t weigh in…god forbid!
Rhysea,
Some men and women advance in their careers based on their appearance. Elizabeth Warren’s opponent for Senate was Scott Brown, a centerfold model. The media and Dr. Ravitch would be remiss if they failed to distinguish between the voices of learned accomplishment and the voices of attractive talking heads.
Off the subject but….Do you know about John Hattie and his work on identifying what makes a difference in schools? What are your thoughts about his work and his “Visable Learning”?
Got some references for us Joe?
TIA,
Duane
I’m happy to find little or nothing, googling Laura Campbell let alone ‘Laura Campbell the 74’, even at Morning Joe (whose followers run off at the mouth). Whaddya say we forget about this meh bimbo? Two posts is already too many.
What’s a “meh bimbo”?
A bimbo = pretty airhead
meh = my sentiments
😉
Thanks, I don’t think I’ve seen the “meh” before.
Who is Laura Campbell?
Perhaps the statewide bus tour of the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools (AROS), can take a detour, after they visit major Pennsylvania universities and urban areas this summer, to sideswipe Campbell, in New York
First and foremost, Campbell Brown is a charlatan. She claims that she wants an “honest conversation” about public education, though she seems not to have ever experienced public education in her K-12 years.
Brown is aligned with the Michelle Rhee crowd. Her husband, Dan Senor, sits on the board of Students First, NY, along with Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, Eva Moskowitz, and Romy Drucker, former flack to Michael Bloomberg.
Senor was the spokesperson for the Bush administration’s provisional government in Iraq, for which he was known for misrepresenting the truth. While Iraq was becoming unglued in the wake of the occupation with violent insurgency, Senor told the American public the country was “returning to normalcy.” For his lying, Senor was given the Distinguished Civilian Service Award.
Brown is funded by Bloomberg and the Walton Foundation, among others.
What is truly incredible, is that anyone gives Brown any credence.
Brown says American public education is an “institutional failure.” But the facts just don’t support her.
Brown once described herself as a “ski bum.” I don’t know whether or not she still skis, but it’s pretty clear she’s still a bum. And not a very honest one.
I saw her on Morning Joe, with Mika B. It is one of those things which irritates me more than almost anything…..the condescending attitude which assumes acceptance of what they say without challenge. I am not sure how well she will hold up…..the wisest thing for her to do is to avoid people who have significant capacity to challenge her……
Joe,
It would be great if one of the talk shows invited me to debate with Campbell.
Heavyweight vs fleaweight.
Getting rid of tenure is a great talking point. Most people don’t understand what it means and say other people shouldn’t have protections they don’t have in their careers. We have not had tenure for years now-regardless of your experience you sign a one-year contract every year. I’ve seen more competent, experienced teachers get pushed out than the incompetent, inexperienced ones. Even if she got her wish It’s not going to change anything for the better.
What an appropriate venue to discuss teaching and her goals. I guess that’s what she hopes to make. A Fortune.