How delightful to see Peter Greene quoted in Esquire in an excellent column by Charles P. Pierce.
Pierce writes:
“Campbell Brown used to be an anchor at CNN. Campbell Brown is now married to Dan Senor, the former official prevaricator for the Avignon Presidency’s excellent Mesopotamian adventure and a mysteriously popular television commentator on events far out of his depth. Campbell Brown also has taken it upon herself to be the latest rich and (semi-) famous person to parachute in and destroy the idea of public education. (And when the history of the Obama Administration is written, its willingness to go along with charter-school grifters at the behest of Arne Duncan is going to be a very big debit on the ledger.) Campbell Brown would like the Democratic candidates to come to an event she’s having and debate about education. So far, as Peter Greene reports via Diane Ravitch’s most excellent blog, the Democratic candidates have told Campbell Brown that, sorry, we all have unbreakable oral surgery appointments that night. Brown blames the teachers unions, which is not a surprise. She blames a teachers union every time a cloud passes in front of the sun.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I strongly urge viewers of this blog to click on the link provided in the posting.
Read the entire piece (it’s very short). Campbell Brown. John King.
Aren’t “thought leaders” supposed to have “thoughts”? Or at least practical and useful and honorable ones?
😎
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwZM4lBagfA “status quo, teachers unions”
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“Obviously, we’re going to challenge the education status quo and education establishment,” she said in an interview, “but we’re also going to highlight what’s working. This is not going to be a one-size-fits-all site.”
It will, she insists, take a “nonpartisan” approach to contentious issues roiling education, including teacher tenure, the expansion of charter schools and the use of taxpayer funds to support vouchers for private education.”
Are most public school parents interested in a candidate forum that focuses exclusively on charter schools, private schools and labor issues? Maybe they are, I certainly don’t speak for them, but I’d be surprised if public school parents were solely focused on charters and vouchers since the vast majority of children at all income levels attend public schools.
Maybe we could instead discuss how ed reform has benefited and/or harmed existing public schools because that was the original premise- the sales pitch- ed reformers promised to improve public schools. If it was really about destroying labor unions, opening charter schools and expanding vouchers they should run on that next time and just leave public schools out of their plans completely.
ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/campbell-brown-has-a-new-education-focused-site-but-is-it-news-or-advocacy/2015/07/14/28c3b2f6-297d-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html
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Here’s some good news..
A propaganda org similar to Campbell Brown’s “THE 74” — “EdPost,” started one year ago this month by Arne Duncan’s former P.R. guru during Duncan’s first years as Secretary—has apparently been a multi-million-dollar flop.
According to Mercedes Schneider, EdPost was started by Peter and
funded with $12 million of Eli Broad’s money… all at the Broad’s behest. Broad was tired of both he, and corporate reformers in general, getting beat up so much by all the anti-corporate reform bloggers (by the way, who were and are blogging for free.)
Just one year in its existence, EdPost is an on-line ghost town,
readership-wise. (tumbleweeds rolling… dust swirling… )
Mercedes Schneider just wrote about this:
One more tidbit:
Peter Cunningham is also the guy who reviewed
Diane Ravitch’s REIGN OF ERROR without — he freely admitted in this review (BELOW) — even reading the book. You can see his Kreskin-like psychic powers at work in that review:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-cunningham/ravitch-redux_b_3768887.html
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You ain’t kidding he “gets it”. Wow. And, Krazy TA is right. Read the whole (short) piece. It’s a journalistic laser beam that very efficiently exposes the Obama education fiasco for the smoking ruins it has become.
Obama thought he was screwing teachers? Ha! John B. King has backfired right in his face. Charles Pierce nails King and his ilk for exactly what they want to do: turn our children into: “Tiny automatons with good test scores.” Yup, this is what the reformistas really dream of: a corporate dystopia that’s reminiscent of the film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. Our children being replaced by compliant drones. Except it’s all being done in broad daylight, right in our classrooms at the taxpayers’ expense!
The blogger Reality Based Educator made me laugh a week ago when he wrote about John B. King, saying “You would almost think, from his track record, that he’s double agent against ed reform.” So true!
Is this what America really wants? Are we reaching the tipping point here? Has it finally become uncool to trash your local, public school???
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“Are we reaching the tipping point here? Has it finally become uncool to trash your local, public school???”
I listened to part of the testing forum Duncan, King, Warren and Murphy held yesterday and it’s all boilerplate ed reform.
It was a discussion on whether states can be trusted to put in the same old list of reforms, or whether that should be mandated at the federal level. Democrats say federal, Republicans say state-level, but nothing else has changed. It’s basically a battle within The Movement on federalism- they all still agree on methods and goals, the only question is federal or state level.
So, I’m wary of any claims Democrats may go in a different direction.
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Duncan and King are not going to be changed. But maybe when public opinion shifts some of the other politicians will have to move with it. What happens when the VOTERS in the Democratic Party go in another direction, including deciding to send their contributions elsewhere?
It’s clear Obama and Cuomo have created a stinking heap of hypocrisy, that’s for sure.
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Warren has made her bed with the test-crazed public-school-bashers as far as I am concerned.
I just hope that if Bernie Sanders gets the nomination he does not do something really stupid like choosing Warren as a running mate.
If he does, I can guarantee him that he will get at least one less vote in the general election (maybe more if I can convince others)
Democrats need to start paying attention to what people like Obama and Warren actually do (and don’t do) for a change. — not just what they say at campaign time to get votes.
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Democrats don’t need to go in a different direction as long as the ESEA cuts the fed out of dictating how states use test scores, & remains silent on VAM. That seems to be the direction it’s taking.
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The Democrat candidates’ non-response to C Brown’s education debate reminds me of the 60s poster “What if they gave a war and nobody decided to come?”
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It’s not like it was a great forum anyway. None of the GOP candidates said anything off the ed reform script and all the questions were limited to the ed reform frame we’ve been subjected to since 2009.
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In the piece titled “The Ongoing Destruction of Public Education,” Charlie Pierce writes that “when the history of the Obama Administration is written, its willingness to go along with charter-school grifters at the behest of Arne Duncan is going to be a very big debit on the ledger.” No kidding. Both the title and that line show that Pierce “gets it.” He understands what’s been happening.
But Pierce saves his best line for last, and sadly, didn’t expand on it. Perhaps in a future column he will.
After taking apart Campbell Brown her husband and Obama’s new education secretary, the last line of the piece was this:
“This is not what Horace Mann had in mind.”
Indeed.
Horace Mann saw public education as “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society. In Mann’s view, public schooling was critical to the development of democratic character and critical thinking. Students should be educated with “the power of reason and the sense of duty” so that they “become fit to be a voter. Education must bring the practice as nearly as possible to the theory.” In a democratic republic, Mann thought, “self-government can not be born and matured in a day…No one can consciously obey the laws of reason and duty until he understands them…Education is our only political safety.”
Other educators have shared Mann’s philosophy, which is sorely missing in from current “reform” discussions and policies.
University of Chicago social scientist Earl Johnson wrote that “the supreme end of education in a democracy is the making of the democratic character.” Gordon Hullfish and Philip Smith considered the development of critical intelligence –– “reflective reconstruction of knowledge, insights and values” –– essential to the maintenance of a democratic society. And John Dewey subscribed to the belief that “the democracy which proclaims equality of opportunity as its ideal requires an education in which learning and social application, ideas and practice…are united from the beginning and for all.”
But, what have we had? No Child Left Behind and rampant testing. Race to the Top, based on more testing, “accountability,” and merit pay, and with a research base as stable as soggy bread. Common Core, funded by Bill Gates, supported ardently by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, and based on the demonstrably false premise that if only schools and teachers would do their jobs then American economic competitiveness would be reborn and we’d be great again and poverty would be eliminated and the middle class restored. As the late Jerry Bracey would say, “And pigs will fly.”
The public education system in a democratic republic is supposed to develop and nurture democratic character and citizenship. Its focus ought to be on developing the “democratic citizen,” one who understands and is committed to the core values and principles of democratic governance; one who is imbued with the “character of democracy.” In that sense, public education is a cornerstone of democratic governance.
But look around. Have you seen the news lately? How are we doing?
The real reform that public school educators and politicians and journalists and citizens ought to embrace is not more testing, or charter schools, or merit pay, or Advanced Placement courses, or vouchers, or SAT scores, or for chrissakes, STEM.
It’s the development and practice –– the ownership –– of teaching and learning for democratic citizenship.
It really is our only political safety.
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…which is why the oligarchs want to destroy it.
“Rooting out Democracy”
Public education
Democracy in action
Demands eradication
By oligarchic faction
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good one…
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John Ogozalek ”
October 9, 2015 at 7:11 am
Duncan and King are not going to be changed. ”
I know Duncan and King are True Believers so we agree there but I listened to part of the Senate debate on the NCLB rewrite and yesterday’s forum and the Democratic Senators all agree with them. There just isn’t any real dissent on any of this in DC. There may be some debate in the future but there’s no real debate now. I’m not even clear on what Elizabeth Warren wants to do to public schools that have poor test scores, but she says “accountability!” constantly so she must intend to do something.
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I didn’t listen to that debate. Perhaps as public opinion changes the leaders will have to listen -if not now then in the future. There certainly seems to have been a shift in public support for standardized testing here in New York, for example. We shall see.
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Good piece, but he has this part backward: “And when the history of the Obama Administration is written, its willingness to go along with charter-school grifters at the behest of Arne Duncan is going to be a very big debit on the ledger.” It’s not Obama going along at Duncan’s behest, it’s Duncan doing what he’s told by his boss. Duncan is a very good soldier, but he’s not the general and definitely not the commander-in-chief.
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I just find this so depressing:
You know, if the President and his team want to go after labor unions, they can do that, but there’s something really cynical and horrible about trotting these working people out the last year of his presidency and claiming common cause.
Mr. Obama had 7 years to address falling and stagnant wages and the lack of “worker voice” in the US (whatever that means) and it obviously wasn’t a high priority for him. If he had worked as hard on wages as he did on his trade deal he might have something to brag about.
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Pierce is very funny, but also very astute. His book “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free” is a hoot. I thank him for this.
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Thank you for publicizing this piece.
Made my day!
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“Charter-school grifters”…that says it all!
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More gross corruption in Ohio ed reform:
“HB 2, the recently passed charter school reform bill, will make matter worse.
A last-minute addition to the state’s charter school reform bill would block some teachers – those teaching at charters run by for-profit companies – from being part of the state pension system.
The change, which would apply only to new teachers at those schools and not to any current teachers, was a surprise amendment to House Bill 2 on Tuesday and drew angry complaints from some legislators and the Ohio Federation of Teachers.
Details about the change, how it came about and exactly who it would affect were difficult to verify last night as teachers unions and legislators made a flurry of phone calls to sort it out. It’s not complicated to understand why this was snuck into the bill at the last minute. Pushing charter school teachers out of the State Teachers Retirement System, and into social security will save a charter school operator about 8% on their payroll. ”
Charter teachers already make 40% less than public school teachers in this state. Why are Democrats supporting cheap labor policy? That doesn’t benefit “my community” at all.
http://www.jointhefuture.org/1715-expect-mass-teacher-exodus-at-ohio-charter-schools
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Charlie Pierce “gets it,” but Bill Gates still seems lost:
http://www.nationalmemo.com/gates-foundation-to-keep-pushing-on-teacher-quality/
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Democracy,
Proof that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
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Every educated person is a future enemy – Hermann Goering
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Just want to point out that Jersey Jazzman’s very excellent takedown on King is also quoted in the piece. The whole Jazzman blog is worth a read
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/10/john-king-new-seced-is-king-of-student.html
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Thanks, Peter!
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Another good recommendation.
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