The Foundation for Education Excellence, the organization founded by Jeb Bush to turn education into an industry, is holding a boot camp to teach newcomers how to shape their message of privatization and call it “reform.”
The teachers are not educators–who cares what they think?–but PR specialists who know the tricks of their trade: how to sell ice to Eskimos, how to sell a defective used car to unwary buyers, how to persuade people that the moon is made of cheddar cheese.
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Diane Ravitch's Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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“Katie Harbath, Global Politics and Government Outreach Manager, Facebook: Katie Harbath is a Global Politics and Government Outreach Manager at Facebook, where she focuses on political outreach. Prior to Facebook, Katie was the Chief Digital Strategist at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. She previously led digital strategy in positions at DCI Group, the Rudy Giuliani for President campaign and the Republican National Committee. In 2009, she was named a Rising Star by Campaigns and Elections magazine.”
I love the language. “Government Outreach Manager”. How can you trust people who insist on these silly, dishonest job titles?
Remember- every gimmick and fad and product this crack lobbying team sells to your lawmakers will be paid for out of public school funding. Public schools have limited budgets and (diminishing) funding. Every penny put toward this stuff means less funding for something else. There is no “plus/and”. That’s a lie. It’s a trade-off.
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They should just call her the Minister of Propaganda and be done with it. 😦
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They are good at masking their true intentions. They even call their reform policies “Student-centered,” when they are actually “corporate America-centered”!
The only way to counter this BS is by exposing it! Thanks for posting this Diane!
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“We dont need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling.”
-Banksy
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I appreciate your understanding of this lie: the words “student-centered” are simply another smoke screen, serving the same greedy purpose as the NCLB/R2T concepts of “school reform” and “educational accountability.”
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Sounds like a great opportunty to follow the wisdom of Sun Tsu: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” From http://www.military-quotes.com/Sun-Tzu.htm There is a lot of sage advice on this page that is directly applicable to our fight against reform, and be assured, the opposition is very experienced in the use of these ideas.
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A free, self-paced course. I’m tempted to sign up just to see what it covers. …in the spirit of “know your enemy”
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Signed up. We’ll see how long I can do it.
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Sun Tzu, The Art of War is required reading in good business schools.
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I agree with you Jon. It would be good to actually go through the course to find out their strategy and then develop a counter argument. I’m sure there is a counter to everything they promote. Better to know what we are fighting.
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I just signed up and did the first module, scoring 8 out of 8 on the quiz. It looks like a standard course, tailored a little to the edreform brigade. So far it is common sense, which could be very useful to the reformers !
I will see how long I can follow it for and report back.
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The “reform” movement is mostly about union busting and making profit using public dollars. It’s not about the kids! Jeb Bush and his ilk are looking for the cheapest way to deliver some sort of “educational” service. That is why he has invested in cyber education. No need for brick and mortar, and no consumables, just pure profit. Too bad students learn very little; it’s a scam. This article from Peter Greene outlines the flawed premises of reform. He explains how they keep failing, but keep spinning the hype and the failure narrative. It is worth reading. Our president should read it. http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-flawed-premises-of-reform.html
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Aaron Lichtig, Head of Industry, Google: A digital native and experienced brand marketer, Aaron leads Google’s relationships with advocacy groups and associations. Before moving to Washington, DC in July 2014, Aaron worked for 3 years at Google Chicago, building marketing campaigns for Fortune 500 food & beverage companies.
Prior to joining Google, Aaron spent 7 years in brand management at Procter & Gamble, leading marketing and innovation for global brands like Tide/Ariel, Gain, Downy, and Bounce.
Look at the marketing of the serivices in the link.. The most frequent words seem to be “simple and easy.” The pitch for the “The K-12 “platform” is “we can do anything, anytime, anywhere but you are in control.”
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How to sell, “God made everything in six days 6,000 years ago” while ignoring evolution, the fact that dinosaurs dominated the earth for more than 100 million years, science, etc.
I read this week that someone is even selling the fact that Noah had dinosaurs on the Arc.
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At the Philanthropy Roundtable website, in the “K-12” section, the villainthropists’ plot to infiltrate university schools of education, is outlined.
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Philanthropy Roundtable is an organization of conservative foundations. It is the equivalent of ALEC for the philanthropic world. Recommends giving to charters,vouchers, TFA, etc
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We can hope that the Ohio public university, schools of education, will be interested in Hess’s description of the plutocrat’s plans.
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