Marla Kilfoyle and Melissa Tomlinson of the BadAss Teachers Association wrote this analysis of the organization called Democrats for Education Reform, known as DFER. It was organized in 2005 by a small group of hedge fund managers. Its purpose is to promote charter schools by funding candidates for Office who share its goal. It also supports test-based evaluation of teachers and high-stakes testing of students. Its inaugural meeting was held at a luxurious apartment in New York City in 2005, where the speaker was Illinois Senator Barack Obama (as recounted in Stephen Brill’s admiring account “Class Warfare”).
During the Obama campaign of 2008, the candidate’s spokesperson on education was Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University. It was widely assumed that she would be Obama’s Secretary of Education. But DFER recommended Arne Duncan, a charter enthusiast known by DFER, and Duncan it was. Obama and Duncan’s Race to the Top embodied DFER’s principles. It propelled the proliferation of charter schools, school closures, Common Core, VAM for teachers, and high-stakes testing for students. It was a complete failure when judged by its announced goals of closing achievement gaps and lifting test scores to the top rank on international tests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just as Citibank, which was in the process of receiving the largest financial bailout in history, instructed Obama on who to appoint to major economic and financial positions in his administration in 2008, DFER did the same with education, giving us the simultaneously evil and moronic Duncan.
Talk about bait and switch!
To be fair though, I don’t think his arm was twisted too hard in either case.
His brain was already twisted, which means his arm did not have to be.
If you looked inside Barack’s head, you would see that the right and left hemispheres have been switched — the ultimate bait and switch.
The DFERs “banked” their elections on BLAMING PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS for their party’s failings … plus KA-CHING.
Yes.
It’s ironic that some of the candidates running against DFER are doing so from the right, while there are DFER candidates who keep insisting that their promotion of “good” charters just like DFER wants is in keeping with their “progressive” values. And sadly, too many progressives seem to agree.
“Hands-off” disconnected progressive action, where those who have no actual experience with poor children or with issues stemming from cultural disconnect, yet spend massive time/money/political energy in telling the nation exactly how “change” should be implemented.
And they have so very devestatingly “blamed” a frightening amount of experience and teacher know-how completely out of the educational system.
So Diane, what is your solution? What ideas are you putting forward?
DFER has consistently advocated for policies that promote public school choice, especially those for low-income and historically marginalized populations that have not been served well by the current system. School choice shouldn’t only be reserved for those that can afford to buy a house in a school district they want their child to attend.
Why are you afraid to give black and brown parents the choice to leave their failing neighborhood schools and attend a high-performing charter or traditional district school?
David,
I wrote a book called “Reign of Error” with my solutions.
The root cause of low test scores is not teachers or schools but poverty and segregation. DFER, like Trump and DeVos, raise obscene amounts of money to promote candidates to destroy public schools and convert them to private management. The charters cherrypick the students they want and kick out those that don’t get high test scores.
The Democratic Party in both California and Colorado have told DFER—the hedge funders—to stop using the party’s name as they are a corporate front.
If they wanted to improve education, the hedge finders would advocate for the solutions in my book, discussed on this blog many times.
Try reading. It won’t hurt you.
now Duncan has allied himself with student advocates for gun control. And Obama?
Why are you changing the subject to gun control? Let me guess? You believe those students are paid “crisis actors” and the more assault weapons sold in America that can mow down hundreds of our citizens in a few minutes, the happier you are.
Duncan should just go read a picture book.
Far too cognitively complex a task for him.
When Bill Gates was explaining Common Core to Duncan, he undoubtedly used an apple.
Duncan: “So, Bill, you are saying Common Core is just like that apple core you are showing me? All brown and rotten with cyanide laced seeds?”
Bill Gates: “Yes, exactly.”
If your book is anything like the comment you have posted, then i’ll have to pass. In the current political climate we live in, it is important to differentiate facts from fiction. So in that spirit, let me attempt to clarify some of the mistakes you made in your post above.
1) DFER actively campaigned against Donald Trump/Betsy Devos and after he was elected, DFER published numerous op-eds against his administration and even warned Democrats not to join his education team. What DFER is advocating for and what the Trump administration is advocating are diametrically opposite.
DFER does not support vouchers or any tax credit supporting private school tuition. DFER has pushed for increased funding of public education and high-quality pre-school. I can go on and on. Google is your friend, Diane. If you are not comfortable with Google, I can send you plenty of links. Just ask.
2) it is against federal law to turn away any student from a public school. That includes charter schools. Charters cannot turn away a family that wants to attend. If you see any schools doing this, please call the office of civil rights at the Department of Education. I can give you their number if you wish.
3) In Colorado, union backed candidates in the school board in Douglas County and Denver (2 out of the 3 largest school districts in Colorado) spent the same as their DFER endorsed candidates. So no, DFER is not raising obscene amounts of money. They are raising the same amount as the unions.
4) Poverty and segregation are the problem…typical comments from a wealthy white woman. So tell me, why is a school with black kids inherently a bad thing? Do black and brown kids need white kids for them to learn? Do you not realize how racist you sound?
And what do you say to a poor family trying to send their kid to a different school – a safe school with higher test scores with order and discipline – Sorry, save enough money and buy a house in that particular enrollment zone.
But I am not surprised with your comments. You want to keep the status quo. You had school choice Diane, that is why you sent your kids to private school. Why don’t you allow that same choice for families that aren’t as wealthy as you?
David,
Try reading a book. I promise it will raise your knowledge level.
DFER is ignorant about education. No one on its board or staff ever worked in a school. It is an organization of hedge fund managers dedicated to charter schools, not public education. Of course, it opposed Trump because it knew that the Obama-Clinton wing of the party would support charters. Did you know that 90% of charters are non-union. DFER is good with that? DFER is surely happy with Betsy DeVos, who loves charters as much as DFER does.
By the way, I had a lengthy exchange on this Blog with Whitney Tilson. I assume you never read it.
DFER traffics in Dark Money. It’s views were thoroughly repudiated by the California Democratic Party in 2012, the Colorado Democratic Party in 2018, and the voters of Massachusetts in 2016.
If you think that charters accept the same students as public schools, you have not been paying attention. Even the federal GAO called them out for the small numbers of students with disabilities they enroll.
Surely you know that Eva Moskowitz doesn’t accept any new students after third grade. What public school does that?
Hedge funders love charters. They are the gateway to vouchers. School choice harms public schools.
DFER represents the corporate wing of the Democratic party. It has hedge fund managers and leaders of Silicon Valley in its ranks. DFER has emerged as a manipulative political agent that promotes privatization of education. Like ALEC they are lobbyists that deal in dark money to influence national and state education policies. Since money now equals speech, DFER uses its deep pockets to promote the privatization of education. They continue to expand charters despite the NAACP’s position against it. They refuse to accept the evidence that you “cannot test your way to excellence.” Standard testing is a vehicle of privatization so DFER supports it. Their considerable wealth has many Democrats reluctant to voice their support for public education. One of the reasons that Sanders and Warren were willing to criticize privatization in Puerto Rico is that neither of them is beholden to DFER. Both ALEC and DFER have too much money with which to manipulate elections and policies.
DFER has its hooks in the corporate wing and the progressive wing, too.
Don’t forget that Tom Perriello, Bernie Sander’s handpicked “progressive” democrat candidate for Governor of Virginia, was DFER politician of the month.
But DFER did not own Ralph Northam or Tim Kaine. What wing are they from?
I think those of us who support public education need to understand that public schools are being undermined by politicians of all stripes who absolutely refuse to speak honestly about how the “good” charters they support get that way.
The progressive wing has not embraced the NAACP moratorium on charters. And if the reason is NOT that they are in the pocket of DFER, then it means that they are true believers that privately run charters with their private oversight and ability to kick out kids who are too expensive are wonderful assets to public education.
Many Democrats and progressives say they don’t want another New Orleans. But another NYC, where hedge funded charter chains counsel out any kid who isn’t an “asset” to their school — and lie about it — are perfectly fine with them.
If they aren’t doing it because DFER owns them, then their ignorance after all this time seems intentional.
“What wing are they from?”
The neoliberal wing. Saying a nice things about public education doesn’t make one a progressive.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/tim-kaine-corporatist-on_b_11181844.html
cx, “a few nice things”
I’m not so sure it is intentional. That ignorance itself is the problem as most of the folks, at least in my mind, refuse to read, see, attempt to understand the total picture of the privatizing of public education.
How to break through that ignorance, whether intentional or not is a prime question in my mind. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but one of the main points is that all we do must maintain a “fidelity to truth” attitude/basis. What do I mean by that term, which I have taken from Comte-Sponville? From Ch. 2 of my book:
“Now, let’s delve into Comte-Sponville’s concept of “fidelity to truth.” What is meant by fidelity to truth, that of being faithful/true to truth? Preliminarily and primarily, Comte-Sponville states “All fidelity is—whether to a value or to a person—is fidelity to love and through love.” Since he considers love to be the greatest and hardest to achieve virtue that statement rightly precedes all his other thoughts on the subject. We can follow that up with the consideration that fidelity is the “will to remember” truthfully and that fidelity “resists forgetfulness, changing fashions and interests, the charms of the moment, the seductions of power.” Fidelity to truth means “refusing to change one’s ideas in the absence of strong, valid reasons, and. . . it means holding as true. . . ideas whose truth has clearly and solidly established.” At the same time fidelity to truth means rejecting discourse that has been shown to have errors, falsehoods and invalidities. However, “Being faithful to one’s thoughts more than to truth would mean being unfaithful to thought and condemning oneself to sophistry.” To be unfaithful to truth, to be in error, then is to reject that which makes honest communications, policies and practices cogent and a human good, a virtue.
• Speech and/or writing accurately describes policies, practices and outcomes (discourse).
• Using the correct/intended meaning of a word in light of the context.
• Discourse serves to enlighten and not obscure meaning.
• Discourse is free of contradictions, error and falsehoods.
• The “control of belief by fact” (S. Blackburn).
• Discourse is based in skeptical rationo-logical thought processes in which a “scientific attitude” holds sway.
• Discourse based on/in faith conventions is eschewed and rejected outright due to separation of church and state constitutional concerns.
• Discourse of expediency based on the rationalizations of “Everyone is doing this”, “It is dictated by the State Department of Education” or “NCLB mandates that we have to do this” is firmly and rightly rejected.”
dienne77 says: “Saying a nice things about public education doesn’t make one a progressive.”
I know.
SUPPORTING public education with your actions and words makes one a supporter of public education.
SUPPORTING the DFER agenda with your actions and words makes one a non-supporter of public education.
Ralph Northam supported public education with his actions and words. Tom Perriello supported DFER with his actions and words.
I won’t argue with those who claim Perriello is more “progressive” than Northam. So what?
Northam supported public education with his actions and words and Perriello did not. I don’t need a label to tell me who to vote for. I want to vote for the candidate who supports public education because that is more important to me.
Those who believe privatizing public education is a fine trade off to make for having a candidate “progressive” on other issues are free to vote for the DFER candidate who is “progressive”.
Just don’t be a hypocrite and claim your candidate is morally superior because he “only” sells out public schools and not trade unions. Your candidate is just as co-opted as any moderate Dem who stands up to DFER and those who would privatize public education. He’s just selling out public schools instead of trade unions.
Duane,
You make excellent points in your post!
The fidelity to truth is a big deal to me. As you may know from my (too lengthy) posts, I believe in facts.
I live in NYC and have a kid in public school so I have witnessed first hand how the fidelity to truth is nonexistent. I watched charter chains proliferate using lies that were outrageous and never challenged by ignorant media types. I saw those charter chains’ results — manipulated by simply ridding their schools of all students who struggle academically using some of the most reprehensible and ruthless methods I have ever seen – being held up as “proof” that having large class sizes and less funding can solve the problems of failing schools because all you need is non-union charter-trained teachers and an charter developed curriculum** and all students in large class sizes will be high achieving! Who needs money when you have those non-union teachers and perfect curriculum that guarantees success?
And sadly, I have seen too many “progressive” politicians ignoring this and using their bully pulpit not to challenge and criticize these charters but to give credibility to them as “good” charters. Because they aren’t for-profit so why should they care if 20% of the Kindergarten and first graders get out of school suspensions or there are graduating classes of 17 or their insisting that their 99% passing rates on state tests should be achievable by all public schools and the only reason they aren’t is their terrible union teachers.
You’d think “progressives” would be fighting this attack on public education. They should be calling out the false narratives and lies that there are “good” charter chains that demonstrate to all the crummy teachers in public school that they, too, could turn 99% of their students into scholars if they just were better.
Instead they support DFER “progressives”.
Maybe I could excuse it as ignorance in past years. But the NAACP moratorium showed that the NAACP was willing to step up and call out this decade plus of dishonest claims and note the problems with these “good” charters that have no oversight except for far away charter promoters.
Why aren’t the progressives endorsing it? Ignorance? At some point feigning ignorance as your excuse for helping push the charter myth instead of helping to debunk it doesn’t fly anymore.
** available for purchase, of course!!
Thanks for the kind words NYCpsp!
I agree with you, NYCPSP.
NF,
After falling off my chair and recovering my power of speech, I have only two words in reply to your comment:
Thank you.
NYCPSP,
Don’t fall off your chair on account of me. You’ll get floor all dirty. Do get a hold of your speech, as you are articulate as always.
At some point, Americans will have to move far beyond this “lesser of two evils” lens, but it’s also that same lens that they will craft as much as what they get to see though it. It’s a process, as was the 20s, 30s, 60s, 70s, and now 2000s. Perhaps you should be a life coach for Nixon and I can be her polticial advisor.
Are you in?
It is very difficult for classroom teachers, whose critical day-to-day issues are been vividly illustrated in the past weeks through dramatic strikes and walkouts and the courage of teachers to tell it like it is, to separate the threads of genuine reform from media-fed ed reform mythmaking. It’s simpler to see it as a partisan thing: Republicans are willing to crush public education and tap into the K12 marketplace as the party of business. Demcrats, on the other hand, still support the little guy and the goods and services of the public commons.
Of course, it’s not that simple. Even well-informed teachers–which means teachers who have been in the classroom long enough to take a breath and look at the big picture– have to absorb a great deal of complex information to assess why a president they voted for (twice) and whose policies they generally supported was such a terrible disappointment on education policy.
Unless you were in the classroom/experienced/paying close attention in 2008 (a small fraction of the teacher workforce, any more), you would assume that Obama was making a good choice in Duncan (rather than the emminently more qualified and policy- moderate Darling-Hammond). Charter schools got their roots much deeper during the Obama administration, but there was no ‘if only we’d voted for ________’ alternative, for most of us.
I teach a course called “Teacher as Change Agent”–have taught it multiple times, in four states/national contexts. Every year, I am shocked by the predominance of teachers who think charter schools are better than the public schools they’re working in, who believe standardized testing is essential to exposing learning gaps, who admire Teach for America and the two-year Ivy Leaguers who are ‘giving back’–and who believe that teacher unions have been the ruination of professional teaching. Not to mention that an organization called Democrats for Ed Reform must know what they’re doing, because all its leaders are rich, yet ‘civic-minded.’
Thanks for sharing this.
The hardest truth; the truth which truly hurts: “I am shocked by the predominance of teachers who think charter schools are better than the public schools they’re working in, who believe standardized testing is essential to exposing learning gaps, who admire Teach for America and the two-year Ivy Leaguers who are ‘giving back’–and who believe that teacher unions have been the ruination of professional teaching…”
Nancy, how awful to see that the self-loathing promoted by DFER has infected new teachers.