If you wonder what reformers are thinking about in private, here is a peek behind the curtain.
Elizabeth Green, founder of Chalkbeat, writes about the debate among reformers about the Black Lives Matter movement.
African American reformers questioned why there are so few people of color in leadership roles in the education reform movement, and whether it can even be called a movement because it is led by people who are white and privileged. Those are questions about power and control, which are important.
Among the questions that were not raised:
Why do reformers think that black children benefit by taking standardized tests that label most of them as failures beginning in grade 3?
Why do reformers express so little concern about class size, budget cuts, funding, and segregation?
Do reformers believe that black children benefit by being in classrooms filled with exploration and joy, rather than test pressure?
Why are reformers eager to open charter schools with no-excuses discipline, where black children are treated like robots and trained to obey?
Do reformers worry that the expansion of charters harms the remaining public schools, which enroll far greater numbers of black children than charters?
Do reformers worry about directing so many inexperienced, first-year teachers to the schools that enroll black children?
Are reformers at all concerned that charter schools are more segregated than the public schools in the same district?
Why do reformers think that giving black children a voucher to enroll in a church school with uncertified teachers will prepare them to thrive in the 21st century?
Why aren’t the leaders of reform fighting for schools that black children attend that look like the schools their own children attend?
Are reformers worried about the disparate impact that “reform” policies have had on black teachers?
Do reformers think twice about union-busting and supplying scabs for non-union schools?
Do reformers understand the role that unions have played in building a middle class?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Huffpo reporters, Ryan Grim and Paul Blumenthal add to the discussion, in their article, “The Vulture’s Vulture; How a New Hedge Fund Strategy is Corrupting Washington…the billionaire hedge fund managers are working the halls of Congress with civil rights groups”.
The profit side of the “philanthropists” ventures are run, almost entirely, by predatory White men.
Linda,
The predatory white men usually hire women and people of color to be the greeters at the door or run the PR.
The array of management photos at Albright Stonebridge shows two women, one of whom is Madelyn.
“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women.” How about a special place in hell for someone who aids a client, hedge funder, Paul Singer, in gutting the workers of Puerto Rico?
Linda – poignant stitching-together.
So complicated, all of this. I don’t doubt that “a Hillary Clinton/Madelyn Albright”, meaning a white, neoliberal, female leader, believes she has held the door of economic opportunity open for the poor and oppressed throughout a lifetime of political service. I don’t doubt she feels and heralds her work for “the children” as her advance guard in this work.
I suspect she (and many/¿most? of us here) feel her efforts are better than nothing and therefore laudable.
It’s the same existential question: is small, incremental change better than none or does it functionally buttress a system of oppression?
Thank you for pointing to this conversation. Yikes. Finally.
I like MLK’s suggestion: that people should be judged based on the content of their character and outward appearances should be irrelevant.
Rhetorically, why does the “content of character” lead, disproportionately, to more management opportunities and better pay for White men?
“functionally, a system of oppression”- HRC on the dais, with Melinda Gates, talking about equal pay (Raise the Ceiling campaign), while the career that employs the most women is de-professionalized, by the Gates Foundation- both women having full knowledge that they would not send their own children to “human capital pipeline” schools.
“Black Live$ Matter”
Black Live$ Matter
Bottom line
Rich get fatter
All the time
Black leaders should examine “reform” with a critical lens and ask themselves the tough questions you pose above. All the disruption and injustice hidden behind progressive rhetoric of “reform” have had a disproportionate impact on poor minority students. In most instances “reform” serves to eliminate locally controlled democratic public education for poor, minority students. Their teachers are often minimally trained novices that lack state certification requirements. Charters have increased segregation and school suspension rates for minority students. Testing does not equal justice, and is not a program. No student benefits from stack ranking which often serves to limit program options for students. The public schools in areas with charters contain a much greater proportion students that have special needs are drained of resources and funds to provide quality service to these students. Charters often reject students that are expensive to educate. The sales draw of “choice” is really about allowing schools to choose the least expensive students, and not about students choosing schools. Corporate owned profit motivated schools will serve themselves before they will consider the needs of minority children. Many people of all races are being duped by “reform,” which is really an Trojan horse sent by billionaires and corporations to get people to accept less so they can profit. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/charter-school-suspensions_us_56e9939ee4b0b25c91841ed5
Well said. …”disproportionate impact on poor minority students…”, It begins and ends there.
This is it in a nutshell.
The white reformers like to divide African-American students into “strivers” and “non-strivers”. And the non-strivers are not welcome.
I think it was Neely Fuller’s observation that the power structure intentionally, keeps Black people moving so, that they can’t build equity. Gentrification provides compelling evidence for the assertion. Charter schools, add to the problem, because by definition, they are transitory. Exacerbating neighborhood problems, charter school debt returns 10-18% to Wall Street, a financial loss to communities.
Rephormers contribute to America’s problems… not unexpectedly.
This is why I object when ed reformers say they aren’t “political”.
Yes, they are. They absolutely flooded the zone with blaring warnings on remediation rates in colleges when there are plenty of studies that say colleges are relying TOO MUCH on test scores to push people into remedial courses:
“College administrators typically rely on standardized tests to decide which students should proceed directly to college-level classes and which students should start in remedial courses. But a new Alaska study adds more weight to a growing body of research showing that standardized tests are a lousy way to make this decision, and that it would be much better to look at students’ high school grades instead.”
This study was funded by the US Department of Education. They don’t pay any attention to the results of studies if those studies aren’t useful to the ed reform narrative of “failing public schools”?
Why didn’t any of them question the remediation rates? If you have two systems, a K-12 system and a higher ed system, why would you ASSUME the K-12 system was solely responsible for remediation rates? That’s not “science”. “Science” would look at BOTH ends of the system. It’s pure politics.
http://hechingerreport.org/colleges-sending-wrong-students-remediation/
“The Alaska data also revealed a group of savvy students who were originally assigned to take “developmental” classes but somehow managed to work the system and bypass them. They went straight into credit-bearing college courses, and 60 percent of them passed.
“They should never have been placed into developmental education in the first place,” Hodara said, citing this as evidence that many students are being mis-assigned.”
I mean, come on. How is ignoring this “student centered”? It’s not just the money they’re wasting by pushing them into remedial classes they DON’T need, it’s the students’ TIME.
If ed reform is truly student centered they will inform students and tell them to question college administrators who shove them into remedial classes.
Reblogged this on Reflections and commented:
These questions strike me as very important. A whole segment of kids are underserved by our ed systme.
I think the depiction of the differences in the attitudes of “liberal” and “conservative” education reformers aren’t quite as sharp and well-defined as the article portrays them. After all, aren’t people like Eva Moskowitz and Michelle Rhee nominal “liberals”? I think the reason all those questions you listed weren’t asked is because many if not most on both sides of that dispute share a common view of black children, and themselves. Most of them seem to think that black kids need regimentation more than white kids, and most of them see the education “reform” movement and themselves as egalitarian when it and they are anything but that. Most also seem to be social Darwinists…a least when it comes to black students.
You’re getting close to the truth: Namely, that the so-called “reform” movement is all about racial segregation. The first calls for “reform” in the form of vouchers arose immediately after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court declared that separate but equal was inherently unequal and ordered racial integration of the public schools. That ruling triggered “white flight” from public schools to private schools — but parents quickly realized that the tuition cost of private schools was more than they wanted to pay out-of-pocket. That realization led political and private resegregationists to the concoct the “reform” of vouchers, and to sell it to eager parents by deceptively marketing it then (and now) as merely giving parents free “choice.”
But the 1950’s voucher reform faded away when it became clear that because of school attendance boundaries no more than a few token blacks would be attending formerly all-white public schools. In 1972 when the Supreme Court finally ordered busing to end the ongoing de facto segregation, the reform movement rose from its grave and has been alive ever since then trying new tactics to restore racial segregation because it’s unlikely that the Court’s racial integration order can ever be reversed. When it became clear in the 1980’s that vouchers would never become widespread, the segregationists tried many other routes to restore racial segregation, and the most successful has been charter schools because charter schools can be sold to blithely unaware do-gooder billionaires as well as to unscrupulous profiteers who recognized charter schools as a way to divert vast amounts of tax money into their own pockets and into the pockets of supportive politicians at every level of government.
An essential part of the strategy to mask their underlying motives has been for segregationists to sell the public on the necessity for charter schools because public schools are allegedly “failing.” With all manner of “research” that essentially compares apples to oranges against foreign nations’ students, and with the self-fulfilling prophecy of dismal public school performance generated by drastic underfunding of public schools, and with condemnation of public school teachers based on statistically invalid student test scores, the segregationists are succeeding in resegregating education in America via what are basically private charter schools that are funded with public money.
Too bad well-intentioned people like Bill Gates and other otherwise intelligent billionaires have been unable to trace the roots of the charter school movement and see the pointed hoods behind the movement’s well-maintained facade.
Based on his actions and their consequences in education – public school closings, charter expansion, high stakes tests as weapons, Common Core, VAM, monetizing student data, etc., etc. – what on earth leads you to say that Bill Gates has good intentions?
Based on his actions – support for public school closings, charter expansion, TFA, high stakes tests as weapons, Common Core, VAM, co-opting/neutralization of teacher unions, monetizing student data, etc., etc. – please explain why you think that Bill Gates has “good intentions?”
Robert Pondiscio wrote a remarkably tin-eared post in which he expressed perfectly the contempt with which the white reformers view African-Americans in their movement who dare to talk about any issues that the white reformers (really the white billionaires who tell them what they are allowed to think) feel are just not relevant and should never be mentioned.
Just like many African-Americans in the reform movement who question absurdly high suspension rates in charter schools — often for 5 and 6 year old children of color — find they are not getting those lucrative gigs in the white-led reform movement where the billionaires park their dollars.
I think the idea is that those poor African-American parents and their kids should be grateful that billionaires are willing to subsidize their education in the no-excuses schools where the reformers know that “their kind” belong. And if they are suspended or if the well-funded charter school decides that kid is no longer worthy, their parents should shut up and be grateful for whatever weeks or months they got. Just like Robert Pondiscio thinks those Black Lives Matter “reformers” should shut up and be grateful for whatever crumbs the billionaires are willing to throw their way. If anyone questions high suspension rates or high poverty rates, it might make those billionaires upset! And it won’t just be the few African-Americans in the reform movement who suffer. All the white people who are making very nice livings in the reform movement by saying anything the billionaires want them to say may also find their high-paying job in danger. What if those billionaires don’t want to fund their organization anymore? They might have to get a real job. Like teaching. And that is the LAST thing they want.
^^^sorry I forgot the link to the post:
http://edexcellence.net/articles/the-lefts-drive-to-push-conservatives-out-of-education-reform