Susan Ochshorn writes frequently about early childhood education: policy and practice.
In this post, she reports on an epic battle in Nevada between teacher Angie Sullivan and an alt-right critic of early childhood education. I have often cited Angie’s work in Nevada. She teaches little kids in Clark County, and her students are poor and include many who don’t speak English. She fights for them like a Mama Bear. Her regular email list appears to include every legislator and journalist in the state. She comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Usually they don’t listen.
Angie writes:
It takes a special kind of person to pick on a three- or four- year old. Victor Joecks is that person.
Joecks formerly worked for the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a local alt-right think tank that regularly publishes articles attacking teachers and public schools. He’s now employed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Owned by billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, it was the first major newspaper to endorse Donald Trump.
Over the past six years, I’ve gone toe-to-toe many times with Joecks, who has zero background in educational pedagogy. He would not last in a public school classroom for a day, let alone a year. He knows nothing about helping a wide variety of students reach their potential. But this does not stop him from spewing his propaganda, as he did recently in his column at the Review-Journal.
Joecks starts his article like this:
A mega corporation is using skewed research to sell its product to gullible parents. The conglomerate claims to help kids, but its product actually has no effect — or a negative effect — on children’s cognitive skills and social behaviors.
This is how he expects to begin a serious discussion of early childhood research? Joecks equates nonprofit public schools with corporations, which sell products. But education is a service, not a product. And he insults parents.
“It’s time to fire up the outrage machine,” Joecks urges—captured in a video that accompanies his column—“ complete with congressional hearings, attorney general lawsuits and shocked, shocked politicians hamming it up in front of TV cameras. This company should be shamed, stigmatized and sued.”
You would think he was discussing a bank that foreclosed on homes—or a dirty politician. He’s actually shaming women, the majority of those who teach young children in preschool programs.
The entire piece is erroneous and foul. Lies, mingled with truth. Preschool is ineffective? My expertise is early childhood. I have studied at three universities. I have applied evidence-based practice for more than three decades. Every piece of research I have ever read over my career supports developmentally appropriate early intervention.
Picking and choosing the project you want to bolster your arguments without looking at the entire body of work will lead you to false conclusions. Extracting bits and pieces from research to justify false conclusions is not valid analysis. Joecks really has to stretch to find a right-wing think tank to provide the data for his rants:
…today’s politicians fail to mention that researchers described the participating children as being at risk of “retarded intellectual functioning.” The children received extensive services, including home visits, and had mothers who stayed at home.
This is like a business claiming a mass-market product will make your child smarter, but putting in the small print: Results only applicable to left-handed, brown-haired 2-year-olds born on Jan. 15 weighing 33.4 pounds.
Besides being utterly offensive, this is direct fear-mongering and waving of “red meat” to the alt-right base. The logic is crazy.
Every state and school district need a spokesperson for children like Angie. She is a tiger when anyone attacks the children.
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