Yesterday I posted Rick Hess’s article chastising his fellow reformers for their celebration of D.C.’s “success” as a model, which led to their embarrassment when the falsification of graduation data was revealed.
John Merrow posted a lengthy comment following Hess’s article, which is worth reading.
He wriites:
Rick Hess has, sadly, been singing the praises of ‘school reform’ from the beginning. That he’s acknowledging error now is laudable, but it’s inaccurate, unfair, and disingenuous to suggest that no one has called attention to the fraud of the ‘test and punish’ approach championed by Rhee and Henderson.
Below are nine citations of my own work (#8 with Mary Levy). If readers of this note have time for only a few, please review #1, “Michelle Rhee’s Reign of Error,” #4, “The Premature Celebration of Henderson’s 5-year Anniversary,” and #8, “A Complete History of the DC Reform Fiasco,” written with Mary Levy.
(I also write about this in my new book, “Addicted to Reform: A 12-Step Program to Rescue Public Education.” If you are wondering who and what public education needs to be rescued FROM, well, let me say that Rick Hess, Checker Finn, Mike Petrilli, the Fordham Foundation, Tom Toch, Education Next, Democrats for Education Reform, and the big testing companies are on the list.)
I believe that Hess and other apologists owe far more than an apology to the THOUSANDS of DC students who were lied to about their progress, and to the teachers who were vilified and driven out of their chosen field.
Right now Hess and others of his tribe ought to be working overtime to persuade Mayor Bowser, who shows no visible signs of having learned from this tragedy, to change course.
Yes, the failure of the Washington Post’s editorial page is regrettable, but I doubt that strong editorials would have been enough to drown out the hymns of praise from Hess, Arne Duncan, the big foundations, and local philanthropists.
That repentant apologists like Rick Hess and unrepentant ones like Tom Toch continue to dine out on and parade their supposed expertise is beyond ironic.
1.https://themerrowreport.com/2013/04/11/michelle-rhees-reign-of-error/
2.https://themerrowreport.com/2013/05/15/michelle-rhee-and-the-washington-post/
3.https://themerrowreport.com/2014/07/24/michelle-rhees-high-priced-pr/
4.https://themerrowreport.com/2015/12/08/a-premature-celebration-in-dc/
5.https://themerrowreport.com/2015/12/16/kaya-hendersons-track-record-redux/
6.https://themerrowreport.com/2015/12/16/kaya-hendersons-track-record-redux/
7.https://themerrowreport.com/2018/02/12/graduation-rates-school-reform-fraud/
8.https://themerrowreport.com/2017/11/11/the-d-c-school-reform-fiasco-a-complete-history/
9.https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/education-of-michelle-rhee/
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The piece was fine until this:
“Now, anyone who follows the education debates knows there’s no lack of criticism directed at school reform and school reformers. Well-meaning educators and system leaders have been subjected to vitriolic and ad hominem attacks from ideologues, leather-lunged union leaders, and all manner of “anti-reformers.” It’s understandable why leaders seek to build teams of loyalists and why, outside of their organization, there emerges a doughty group of earnest allies and true-believers. When you’re part of a small band fighting to change a big, powerful, recalcitrant system, tribalism can seem like a virtue.”
Hess goes into great detail about how many really powerful (and often wealthy) people cheerled the DC hype. The group includes the President of the United States.
To then claim they are some scrappy group of “outsiders” is ridiculous.
No, they aren’t. They absolutely own DC, to the point where no one else is ever heard from, and they also own probably 30 out of 50 states. They ARE the “big, powerful system”.
Let’s be honest about this- part of the reason no one ever criticizes them or examines their claims is because they so dominate the “debate” that it’s probably impossible to get a job in high-level education circles unless you’re in the reform club. No dissenters need apply. They self-select for conformity. There’s no real debate. All of the big decisions have already been made.
“PARCC Backwards”
CCRAPpy
Not “Scrappy”
Reformers are
Testy
Not trusty
For course, is par
Hitting the nail on the head: : NO DISSENTERS NEED APPLY. “All of the big decisions have already been made.”
Ed reformers are such a scrappy group of revolutionary outsiders that 44 states adopted their teacher measurement scale.
44 states out of 50 means they are HUGELY influential. They run education policy, to the absolute exclusion of anyone else. They all cheer the “bipartisan” nature of ed reform but all that means as a practical matter is there’s even less debate than there would be if the two Parties differed on it. They’re a monolith. Duncan is just a more polished version of DeVos. Kasich and Obama were nearly identical. They could use LESS bipartisanship. You’d see fewer dumb ideas if there was some dissent.
Merrow is exactly correct to point out the disingenuous nature of any expressed contrition coming from reform fans. These mea culpa pleas are quite likely purposeful pivots to the next stage of reform orthodoxy which will likely take the form of some sort of justification of privatization that is not reliant on the structures of testing and administration in portfolio managed districts like DC but is instead a “purer” form of “choice”-based creed that furthers the dismantling of public education. This pivot is reflected in a recent report from AEI, Hess’s employer, denouncing the use of standardized tests to enforce school accountability. Peter Greene’s excellent critique of that report is here: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2018/03/aei-voiding-choice-warrantee.html
I wonder about that, though. Ohio ed reformers only moved away from measuring schools on test scores when charters didn’t score any higher than public schools. When public schools complained that the test score measures were reductive and damaging they were scolded and told they were afraid of accountability. What changed?
That was a MIGHTY convenient policy change, I must say. Test scores are not looking great so all of a sudden test scores are no longer the measure? Hmmm.
I’d actually like to see a list of states that DID NOT adopt the entire ed reform policy roster from 1999 to 2018.
There would be maybe 5. Out of 50. That’s not a “small group”. It is the overwhelmingly dominant narrative.
THAT might be interesting. Let’s look at the “growth scores” of the 4 or 5 or 6 states that DID NOT adopt ed reform policy. Compare to the 45 or so who did. That might be an interesting study, if one were actually interested in “what works”.
Merrow has a headstart over Hess on the pseudo-mia culpas. Different names same nonsense. They both might take a cue from the owner/moderator of this blog to help them understand what a true mia culpa is.
“The Mealya culpa”
Mealya culpa
Mealy mouth
Take a gulp a’
Koolaid spout
Sometimes pronounced as “Merrowya culpa”
Should be “Mealy mouthed”
Your comments resonate, SomeDAM Poet.
Duane,
I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around Merrow’s contrition, too. It always seemed to me like he was really just offended personally about being duped by Rhee.
When did Merrow start recognizing the problems with the whole crowd of bogus ed reformers, who’ve been seeing the boatloads of free tax dollars and opportunities to privatize public education as the 21st century gold rush that kills two birds with one stone, meeting the greed-need for fistfuls of cash and the Libertarian agenda to seize political power and destroy the common good (while proclaiming the ills of government having so much power)?
I stopped reading Merrow awhile back, when he was awakened to Rhee’s scam but still touting the success of NOLA. Is he thinking more broadly now or still mostly focused on just the fraud of DC ed reform?
I can’t say what he thinks as I have no idea. But from his writings, well, he continues to and continually uses edudeformer speak of “failing schools” “bad teachers” using test scores as a supposed measurement of education quality and on and on and on . . . What I see in his writing is a hubristic know it all attitude, mainly because as he states over and over “I’m an education reporter.” Hogwash!
We are long overdue for a frank discussion of the hidden objectives of “reform.” Deform is about crushing democratic public education, union busting and the deprofessionalization of a career that is 75% female. Deform is about separate and unequal treatment and exclusion. That is why minority schools are continuously on the chopping block. Deform is also about profit for a few at the expense of many. No matter what high minded goals deformers may claim, we can read between the lines of the handwriting on the wall.
Retired teacher,
If you have not done so, I hope you will read my book “Reign of Error.” I say all this and more about the insidious agenda of reform (aka, privatization)
Thank you. I have read it. You were ahead of the curve as it has taken several years for many others to see what you revealed in your groundbreaking work. Unfortunately, many non-educators remain in the dark. Slowly, but surely, the public is catching on to the plot against public education.
The other day Trump was attacking and discrediting community colleges with DeVos by his side. They are going after higher education next. They want “alternative routes,” ie. for profit routes, to career training.
I was going to add some words of my own on this thread but…
I reproduce in full a comment by James Harvey of 3-30-2018, in the thread accompanying Rick Hess’ article:
[start]
While I believe in the forgiveness of sin, I’ve always understood it needed to be accompanied by confession and an act of contrition. I see neither confession nor contrition in Mr. Hess’s column. That Mr. Hess has come to see the light on the misconduct in D.C.’s public schools is better late than never, I suppose. But the truth is he (and by implication AEI) stood on the sidelines cheering as Michelle Rhee, Kaya Henderson, and their staffs cooked the books. “None are so blind as those who will not see.”
It’s not as though nobody noticed. USA Today in 2011 raised the alarm about highly questionable test results. PBS’s John Merrow followed up with a series of truly first-rate reports. But it was all swept under the rug as DCPS conducted a cursory investigation of itself, the results of which were accepted uncritically by the Washington Post, the U.S. Department of Education, philanthropists on the choice bandwagon, and charter and voucher advocates everywhere. Perhaps it’s not surprising that graduation rates were then inflated. Principals and teachers, knowing that the front office wasn’t interested in looking too closely at the assessment results probably understood exactly what the front office and funders wanted to hear about graduation rates.
[end]
Amen!
😎
I have become somewhat “numb” to the scandals and problems of the WashDC publicly-operated school system. The city is unable to provide a decent education to the majority of the children in the city. That is why the participation rate is among the lowest in the nation. There are no signs that anything is going to change. The feds need to just go in, and take over the entire school system, the city has done a terrible job.
Charles,
As Rick Hess acknowledges, DC has been held up by reformers as a great success story for choice, charters, vouchers and cracking down on teachers. Michelle Rhee said it was going to be a model district. She and then her deputy ran the district for 10 years. They used the whole reformer bag of tricks.