Julian Vasquez Heilig is a noted scholar of subjects such as democratic governance, social justice, inequity, and Teach for America. He has recently debated leading figures in the corporate reform movement, including Howard Fuller and Steve Perry. (Both debates will be posted here.)
He thought that Shavar Jeffries, the president of Democrats for Education Reform, agreed to debate him. But suddenly, Jeffries tweeted that he would not debate Heilig because Heilig is “not serious.”
Shavar Jeffries said that Heilig’s blog “Cloaking Inequity” could have been written by a sixth-grader.
You can follow their tweets:
@ProfessorJVH for Heilig
and
@shavarjeffries for Jeffries, who ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Newark and now leads the hedge fund managers’ group DFER.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No doubt he thinks the debate would be rigged …
Twitter invites insults, and that is why Trump loves it.
Julian does not need to lower himself to respond to someone who is so intellectually fragile that he responds just like Trump.
It’s sad that this is the best that Wall Street money can buy!
An ad hominem attack? He must have a really persuasive argument.
I won’t provide any spoilers in respect to the Howard Fuller v. Julian Vasquez debate, but when Diane posts the link (if not sooner) it’s definitely worth a listen.
Sign me up for the Fuller fan club.
What has been evident to me for years is that the so-called reformers have not been interested in reform for many years. They are interested in promoting charter schools.
And if evidence shows problems with charters, they don’t want to hear it.
Unfortunately, the only thing that will change their minds is if billionaire Bill Gates, and perhaps other billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, have an epiphany and realize that the reforms they are promoting have been enriching unethical people while hurting many at-risk students. If and when that time comes, I fully expect the reform movement and all their many organizations (FES, DFER, the 74, etc.) will suddenly “discover” accountability.
It’s a shame because I doubt very much Gates and Zuckerberg really wanted only yes men telling them that it was all working fine. Or perhaps that is what they wanted.
It’s a shame when non-profit organizations become “please our funder” organizations instead of “do the right thing” organizations. It happened in Brookings, which has lost all credibility except with people funded by the same billionaires as they are. The educational reform movement no longer even understands what accountability is, nor are they interested in hearing anything but good news about how miraculously charters are working. In that, they remind me of the people who vote for Trump. No matter what facts you present, they are so certain that the rest of the political system is corrupt that they happily support dishonest and falsehoods and don’t care about the vulnerable people who might be hurt and who are made his scapegoats.
The educational reformers do exactly the same thing. They have convinced themselves that public schools and teachers’ unions are so corrupt that they’d rather support a lying dishonest and greedy charter that will help them upend the system. They don’t care a bit about the many children who are hurt — they try to rationalize it by saying ‘well some kids are helped” as if the only way to help the other kids is by hurting the other ones. And that is the biggest lie of all. That hurting many many vulnerable kids is just the price you have to pay in order to help some of the others. The reform movement didn’t start out that way, but it turned out that they found the greatest financial reward by deciding that helping some kids could only be done by hurting others. And what’s worse, pretending that any hurt suffered by those kids was THEIR OWN FAULT.
And that is unforgivable.
Real reform is being done by hard working teachers in public classrooms. Liberals and progressives are the real ‘conservatives’ because we aren’t bent on destroying everything in our path for the love of money. We are conserving what is left of our democracy.
This is the equivalent of calling out everyone else to disclose but then refusing to release both your tax returns and medical records. It seems Trumpism is catching.
Yes Mary. It is their MO. Remember the scheduled debate between Rhee and Diane that never happened after demands were met. They know they are full of hot air. I’m doubtful that a presidential debate will take place for the same reason.
Reblogged this on Matthews' Blog.
Jeffries is, apparently, a coward.
Jeffries is an attorney. End of story.
If people in Ohio are curious about who is running ed reform in this state, read this great piece in the Columbus Dispatch:
“He recalled that the 2003 agreement was negotiated by him and Jeff Forster, then ECOT’s superintendent, over several lunches at the former Clarmont Restaurant just south of Downtown.”
It’s incredible. At one point they took regulations directly from a for-profit charter lobbying org and wrote them into law.
What’s unusual about the piece is it shows HOW LONG this has been going on. 13 years. At least.
You know what they were doing all last week in Columbus? Having a week-long, publicly-financed charter school promotion event. In 2 weeks the 93% of Ohio students who attend public schools go back to school. Yet lawmakers in Columbus spent a solid week on charter school promotion.
100% captured. All of them.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/08/14/1-struggle-with-ecot-nothing-new.html
According to The Columbus Dispatch…… according to…. according to… according to (I know, too many dots!). go for it. https://youtu.be/bq2_wSsDwkQ and watch the next one which isn’t on youtube yet.
“According to” is to whom you listen. Not a journalist necessarily, but someone who is or has been on the inside.
I listen to Diane for that very reason.
Thank you.