Campbell Brown first became an education “reformer” in 2012 when she discovered that there were teachers in the New York City public schools who had been accused of inappropriate sexual contact with students. They were in the so-called “rubber room,” awaiting a hearing, and she wanted to know why they had not been fired outright. She concluded that the union was protecting sexual predators. Since then, she has gone on to became one of the faces of “reform,” attacking tenure, unions, and public schools and promoting charters and vouchers. And of course, she pals around with Betsy DeVos, who has helped to fund Campbell Brown’s website; and Brown, in turn, was on the board of the American Federation for Children, DeVos’s organization that lobbies for charters and vouchers.
But, lo!
The New York Times revealed that there is a practice at elite boarding school of covering up instances of sexual misconduct by teachers. When they are asked to leave, they move on to another private school or even to a public school, with no one the wiser. This is known, says the article, as “passing the trash.”
Davis Guggenheim, in his mendacious film “Waiting for Superman,” said that ineffective teachers were shifted to other public schools, in what is known as “the dance of the lemons.” If he ever gets around to writing about elite boarding schools, he might take a look at “passing the trash.”
Since the elite private schools don’t have unions or tenure, whom shall we blame for this indifference to the well-being of students in their care?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yep. Bad as the RC church. Creeps everywhere.
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I was thinking the exact same thing about the priests and the Roman Catholic Church, Harlan.
Dance of the lemons, passing the trash, whatever you want to call it, it amounts to falsely protecting the reputation of the institution (school, church, etc) at the expense of vulnerable children.
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I thought of the same connection, but I caught myself. This is an example of improper labeling like the article below that deals with “dropout factories”. Labels are generally misleading.
If there is an organized effort within a large institution to commit some atrocity, it might be appropriate to use a label which taints the whole organization. But I have witnessed more than one newspaper article saying that Fireman John Doe or teacher Mary Roe stole money or was arrested for drugs. The fact of their occupation tends to taint a whole group when the act was individual.
Creeps, as you say are indeed everywhere, but that does not mean we should commit the fallacy of generalization by labeling the creep with one institution or another.
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While it is true that the misdeeds of one individual or another should not taint an entire institution, Roy, it is also true that, when that institution sweeps such egregious misdeeds under the rug so that the miscreant is then free to move to another school or institution and continue his or her misdeeds, or when the miscreant is actually quietly transferred to, say, another unsuspecting parish, as was the case with many of the Catholic priests, well, then I’m sorry, but that school, church, etc, is, indeed, tainted.
While there were not organized efforts by the institutions to commit those atrocities, by covering them up, they allowed atrocities to be committed elsewhere and were therefore complicit.
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Recently tragic events of an abusive nature happened at two churches. One was an organized denomination and one was at a nondenominational, independent church. The first incident was reported as being from the denomination. The second was reported as a church. All members of the denomination were tainted by the first incident, even though the church folks handled it properly. None of the other independent churches were tainted by the second incident, because they were independent. Both were, of course, salacious enough to grace the front page.
This is the problem of public schools. If a public school teacher does something asinine, as one near here recently did, anti-public school people will point to all public schools as complicit. But if an independent school has such an incident, it is only applied to that school, and perceived as an aberration.
Either way, the tragic nature of the incident is downplayed in favor of the story of conspiracy. It plays better, but is not always a better indication of truth.
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RC scandal indeed bad.
More so, comparatively, in public schools.
You are right with “creeps everywhere.”
Hmmm…any movies being made about the public school sex scandals?
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“More so, comparatively, in public schools.”
I don’t understand what you are saying Veritas. Please explain.
TIA,
Duane
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In my state and others as well, private K-12 schools are not regulated, so certification and even background checks are not required of teachers, as they are in public schools.
I say blame it on those who push unregulated markets and deregulation, because regulations were put in place in order to protect us, and unregulated schools are in the same category as unregulated car mechanics…
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Or unregulated doctors. Or unregulated fire fighters. Or unregulated restaurants, drug companies, whatever.
This is Ayn Rand on steroids. Deregulate everything, let the market rule, and if your kid is abused at school, your food makes you sick, your drugs poison you, etc, well, too d@mned bad, as long as the rich get richer.
{{Sigh}} 😩
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Campbell Brown supports the double standard where community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools are to blame for everything from poverty to prison populations, etc, but the autocratic, secretive, often child abusive, and fraudulent and inferior corporate charter/voucher schools are measured by another metric that ignores everything that the public schools are attacked for.
Campbell Brown is a paid off shill, a sellout, and a minion.
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Hey, didn’t the Donald go to an elite boarding school? Must be where he learned how to grab, uh, treat women.
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He went to a military school, though he got five deferments from the draft and never served. That may explain why he loves generals.
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Overall seems like quite a broad brush being used with which to paint in black a supposed connection between Brown and DeVos and the supposedly corrupt, student-abuse allowing “elite schools”.
Yes, every case of student abuse should rightly be condemned, and those who cover up and pass the abusers on should also be condemned.
But something isn’t sitting right with me about the coverage here. Have C. Brown and B. DeVos come out in favor of the abusers? Or is it that they have said nothing? Somehow bringing in Brown and Devos in conjunction with the NYTimes article just doesn’t sit right by me, it’s like “guilt by association” or something to that effect.
Now are there plenty of other things on which to focus with those two? Of course, and let’s get at it.
But this way, no!
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Duane,
I think you missed the point. Campbell Brown made her name by accusing unions of protecting teachers who were predators, although had been accused but had no hearing. She made it sound as though the problem of adults abusing children was somehow related to public schools/unions/tenure/teachers. The Times story suggests that her accusation was wrong and that miscreants can be found in schools where there are neither unions nor tenure. And the incidents get hushed up.
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I would only disagree in that she didn’t make her name attacking Unions, Teachers and Public Schools. She used her name that she had as a public figure for the specific purpose of attacking Unions and public schools. Dan Senor or his partner would not be as effective a figure in this assault of right wing Republican money as his wife.
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Joel, she had a “name” in broadcast journalism but her role as an ed reformer started with her attacks on unions, teachers, public schools for protecting sexual predators
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I understand your point that it certainly seems hypocritical, if not actually is, that Brown hasn’t done a butcher job on those private schools that she did on us public school teachers. Equal school/teacher bashing, eh. Perhaps she learned from her egregious mistake of 2012 (ha ha-quoting Foghorn Leghorn “That’s a joke my boy, a joke).
Is Brown a sycophantic elitist snob? No doubt in my mind, but I wouldn’t say that the “Times story suggest her accusation was wrong.” I see nothing in the article about Brown. And I would hope that Brown wouldn’t broadly paint all private elite school teachers with the broad brush that she used 5 years ago to accuse public school teachers and their unions.
The connection is made by you, and that’s okay, I just can’t go there in combining the information in the two articles to come up with that connection. In this case connection does not equal causation to paraphrase a wise warning. There are enough solid reasons to fight against Brown and her ilk without making quite arguable accusations (not that I don’t make ‘quite arguable accusations’ at times-some might claim all the time). I just don’t see this one, that’s all.
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