Gary Rubinstein admits that he misses the big names of reform whose stars have flickered out: Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Arne Duncan, Cami Anderson, and those others whose words could be picked apart and ridiculed.
Gary says the successors to the golden oldies are not nearly as much fun. He explains by quoting at length from the current leader of Teach for America, whose prose is flat, bland, and blah. She even quotes George W. Bush on the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” How low can you go? Well, maybe some day she will quote Donald J. Trump to inspire the troops.
He writes:
“The disappearance of the reform rock stars and replacement by this new breed of bland understudies was a first step in the collapse of the reform movement. Trump and DeVos surely have not helped Democrats continue to embrace ‘school choice’ as a viable solution. Then, you knew it had to happen eventually, Bill Gates recently came out and admitted that teacher evaluation reform didn’t work as well as he had predicted so he is going to instead work on curriculum development. Whether or not the reform movement is merely ‘playing possum’ right now and playing dead while really planning their next wave of attack (some are giddy about the upcoming Janus Supreme Court case), I suppose we will find out in the years to come.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Too bad Bill Gates isn’t among them. And Zuckerberg just needs to go away, too.
Oh, they’re still busy. This outfit called Innovate has been trying to take San Francisco by storm, staging fake parent-empowerment events to tell the world how what we need are more charter schools.
They’re probably hoping we don’t ask too much about some of the big personality superstars, like Michelle Rhee. Her defunct operation StudentsFirst was supposed to be reaping millions in donations, but it’s utterly unclear what it has to show for it, except presumably a nice cushy lifestyle for Rhee.
They made this guy a “rock star” and then found everything he claimed was false:
“Grover also touted the more than 1,000 visitors who came to witness Innovations firsthand.
“They see the magic and, more importantly, you know what they see?” Grover asked. “They see that they can do this in their schools.”
Innovations and its principal got lots of attention. Grover has spoken at education conferences across the country, and the acclaim helped him to get hired as a consultant on several projects, from Arkansas to as far away as China.
But where supporters see magic, critics just see a not-so-cheap trick ending with a disappearing act.”
“Clara pointed to a Deseret News article that described the school’s 89 percent graduation rate in 2014 — double the rate (45 percent) recorded by the Utah State Board of Education. The inflated rate was repeated in an article in Education Next, a publication of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.”
Does Education Next have an editor? Why are they promoting false claims on “blended learning”?
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/03/04/a-salt-lake-city-principal-traveled-the-world-promoting-his-innovative-high-school-while-it-fudged-graduation-rates-and-spent-thousands-on-treats-and-video-games/
Education Next is a pro-reform operation. That’s why they’re promoting false claims. Though often the MSM falls for their snake oil (pretty much in clueless innocence). In the case of the impartial press, editors know less about the substance than the reporters, who are the ones who did the research, so if the reporter falls for snake oil, it’s hit or miss whether an editor would challenge it.
Once again, Utah gets hoodwinked to give a bunch of money over to charlatains. I’m hoping that these new reports on charter school frauds starts a trend in Utah. People have mostly ignored that in this state over the years.
One of the pivots the deformers made is that they have turned away from trying to win over the hearts and minds of parents and citizens as a way of creating the illusion of popular support for their toxic policy agendas. It didn’t work. All their marketing, disinformation and lies failed to gain traction. They never got close to the critical mass needed. Whatever else you may say about the current political climate, the common sense and the BS detectors of citizens back then worked pretty well. Instead, the deformers have gone dark, as in dark money, back room influence and lobbying, money laundering schemes to hide donor identities, etc., etc., you all know the drill. They figured out that a top down approach where they only have to sway policy makers was their only path forward, the only way they could attempt to control policy outcomes. They are still dangerous, they have not gone away and neither have their oligarch donors. I remain amused by the fact that after years of talking crap, Rheevolting quit the public sphere and went to work for a fertilizer company.
They continue to be a threat as long as politicians can still be bought and the system rigged. They may have gone “dark,” but they are still looking for public schools to blow up like home grown terrorists.
“. . .as long as politicians can still be bought. . . ”
We’ll be long dead and Ol Ma Nature will have to have obliterated homo supposedly sapiens before that will not be a phenomenon.
She is or was on the board of the fertilizer company, which isn’t “work.” With all the donations she raked in, she certainly should be able to live well without actually working.
True, but given her cruel and sadistic behavior in the schools, it’s hard to imagine she’s not still hurting someone.
Even her children were taken away from her by her first husband, since he presumably didn’t want his daughters in the same home as a widely-accused pedophile (Rhee’s current husband, former Sacramento mayor and charter school scammer Kevin Johnson).
Then there was that grossly revealing moment when, in order to illustrate some reform lie of hers, she said that her daughters “sucked’ at soccer, while they were present in the room.
Charming lady.
Secretary DeVos has had her moments:
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4685456/betsy-devos-black-colleges-school-choice
This Villanueva Beard Lady, ya know, ought to have someone, ya know, give her some speech/talking coaching to help her, ya know, prevent her 80s persona from coming through, ya know!
Was she a Valley Girl?